Where it Began (I Can’t Begin to Know When)

There’s a place I remember, it’s jumbled and indistinct because it’s on the very edge of my memory. It’s made up of chunky jumpers with crazy zigzag designs, sandpits with toy boats floating on a sea of coarse orange builder’s sand, and door curtains of colourful plastic ribbons that waft in the endless summer breeze. Everything is tinged slightly Polaroid brown, and songs by Neil Diamond play on the radio all the time. It’s a place where laughter and happiness linger, because sadness hadn’t been invented yet and pain could be wafted away with a kiss and a Mickey Mouse sticking plaster. It’s the place that is my earliest childhood memories.

I was playing with Tom at the weekend, bouncing him on my knees in time to the Glee sountrack album I’d bought (my current Gleekdom is a subject for another post!). Tom was smiling and laughing, and Jane was standing at my shoulder taking some pictures. The song playing was a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, and as some songs can, it immediately transported me back to when I first heard it, back to that Polaroid-tinged place and time. I could taste the happy memories.

And, like the hugely soppy fool I am, I realised I was crying. Big happy tears. On some level I sensed that a huge circle was being completed, and by having my own little family I was getting back to a place I’d left 30-odd years ago. The setting is totally different, and I’m playing a different part, but it’s the same.

My son’s too young to start having permanent memories yet, but when he does I want them to be memories like those. Aimlessly happy random memories that ring with laughter, music and wonder. I want for him to never have to grow up and learn all the bad things that happen; and simultaneously I want for him to grow up and learn all the things he possibly can. Maybe even one day sit with a small child on his knee and be transported back to those JPEG-tinged (or, whatever) days of the mid 2010s.

He’ll probably be as soppy about it as I am.