Children who hit

[ailbhe]

My mother swears she was never hit by any of us after we were two.

But we can remember doing it. Not much, like, but hitting one's mother is a bit of a Big Deal and sticks in the guilt-ridden memory somewhat.

I wonder will my journals prevent me from rewriting the children's pasts? Or just alter how I rewrite them? I know other parents who swear they never smacked their children, with similar contradictory child-memories.

Comments

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Memory is pretty editable, really. There's a family story of an elderly uncle trying to give one of my brothers whiskey at a very tender age "because he sounded like he was having a bad time with the teething".

I am pretty sure I remember coming into the kitchen and hearing my mother explaining to him that no, whiskey was not suitable for babies. That would mean I was about 5-ish (can't remember anything from before about 4), so that would mean it was the youngest brother.

My father, however, is convinced it was me he was trying to give the whiskey to.

And another relative, since deceased, was pretty sure it was the middle brother, because he and the elderly uncle had a falling out soon after that.

There's also the possibility that it never happened at all, happened to one of my cousins, happened in a book or on TV, or the like, and it just got absorbed into family lore and repeated often enough that it has since become "fact".