Childhood memories

This morning finds me in school folding an A4 size paper to prepare working with my counselee to construct a snake and ladder game. The idea is for the child to identify specific good behaviour that are represented by forward leaps up the ladders and unfavourable behaviour which are like snake bites taking plunges in the teachers' approval of the pupil. As I sat doing this alone in the room amdidst strains of Malay gamelan music from the music room nearby, I whispered softly to myself "Let's hope this makes an impression." No amount of teachers' scolding and advice was of help for this 9 year old trouble maker. I picked up the idea of using such media from a book to drive messages across instead of using words.

I think about the strange impact of childhood memories and how sometimes even the most ordinary can leave a deep impression. The things which my children remember as a child often came as a surprise to me as they seem to be quite uneventful and unimpressionable when viewed by an adult. For example my son once related about the great tomato and egg soup served by the restaurants in HK which we visited when he was just about 6 or 7.

In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, the writer described how certain childhood memories affect the lives of the main characters. The eldest brother remembered the incident when a stranger bought him a pack of peanuts. That became the only pillar for his faith in human kindness. The third brother had a constant image of his mother lifting him up during his baptism which subconsciously became a motivating force in his religious pursuit. Their illegitimate brother was unable to assume an identity of his own because as a child the housekeeper told him he was not a human but was like the moss that grew in the bathroom; hence he had to leach onto the second brother as a model to follow blindly. The writer did not mention about the second brother having any childhood memories at all. This character was portrayed as a cold intellectual.

A dharma teacher once shared about his memories of his bus rides home as a child growing up in a small town in Italy. He would plonk himself at a seat just behind the single seat meant for the bus conductor. There he would watch the man counting the coins collected. That sense of warmth and well being of those moments propelled him to find more of such experiences in his life, thus motivating him to study the dharma and practise meditation.

My own good childhood memories centred around being loved and pampered by my maternal grandmother who remains in my mind as a passive but resilient figure in her quiet acceptance of the unfortunate things that happened to her family. She is my role model though I am still a far far cry from her.

In my dealings with the children I can only hope that messages whether told as a story, spoken by puppets, seen as drawings on a paper and figurines that stood out in a sandtray may dawn on some minds some time down the road.