Musings on memory

Yesterday when we were getting ready to play in the snow Vanh mentioned his Pooh hat. "Pooh hat blew off, gone in the water," he said. "Daddy couldn't reach it." Which was exactly what happened - late last summer a strong gust of wind blew his Pooh hat into Dow's Lake, where it was given up for lost. The thing is, Vanh didn't have the vocabulary to say much more than "Pooh hat - water," at the time, and the incident hasn't been discussed since. It really struck me how he could retain and articulate such a clear memory without having words for it at the time it happened.

At the same time the boys have added an - interesting? - demand to their repertoire lately. "I need to be carried Mommy (Daddy)," they say, and what they mean is they want you to walk around holding them for a while. No sitting, no standing still, no talking to anyone else - in other words, the exact and only routine that would settle them when they first came home as babies. I tend to scoff a bit at the idea of babies having memories but it really seems like they are working through something.