Five Good & Five Bad Memories

If someone says to you tell me five things you can recall from your childhood that you favour as good memories many would reel off three, four and if you are really lucky the whole five. However if the question is reversed and you have to mention five bad memories you may struggle to mention five things me however can reel off at least ten without a breath. Why is that? I have started to question a lot of things in my life; it could be just a stage that I am going through? But I ask again why that is? What did I do as a child that caused me to have bad memories why wasn't I the lucky child with parents that gave me a life to start off with a pleasant one?

Try listing the five good and the five bad?

Are you a lucky one with blessed parents or have your parents got a lot to answer for? As a parent myself I worry that my children will be looking back years later asking the same questions but I hope I have learnt a thing or two and my children will reel off more good memories than bad!! Only time will tell I am sure.

Memories are strange things you sometimes think that they are gone, lost forgotten pushed away but then one day out of nowhere like a stormy raincloud it appears takes you by surprise and soaks you to the core. That sort of memory takes you by surprise shakes you like that clap of thunder that follows the rain and even after the initial shock has gone you are still left with that clammy air wrapping around you.

My first memory is actually a good one. I am three dressed in white pyjamas with little red and blue flowers in that soft brushed flannel cotton with lace around the trim. The only thing I can see is darkness not actually a colour but sort of whirl of colours mixed together creating the darkness. I very quickly search for a box a huge box and inside is a bright yellow light – the big yellow tea pot made by bluebird. It was Christmas and all I remember is this feeling excitement of this gift mixed with the feeling of being alone. My mother had gone into hospital to have a baby my little brother. The next day I remember going to visit my brother in the hospital and seeing this large room with a bed and my mum sat in it with her red dressing gown smiling a tired look in her eyes. My mum has the darkest curliest hair I have ever seen black and wiry against her pale soft skin. She smiles at me and tells me to have a look – I remember peering over the clear plastic crib and seeing this tiny bundle of a baby. He is tiny just like a doll my baby brother.

For every good memory I can think of the bad to follow I remember my baby brother and the smell as if it was yesterday and it wasn't it was over 24 years ago - I still love my baby brother like the first time I saw him. He was Innocent had not done anything he was brand new - so why do I feel a sense that I have let him down somehow. As a big sister I am there for him no matter what but I feel that he had lost parts of his childhood and now as an adult struggles to accept life.

So back to my first question have your parents got a lot to answer for?

Yes I believe so - as soon as you arrive into this world your fate, and path are already mapped out by your parents - it is up to you as an individual to try and follow the path you think is right and that is not easy when you have your parents to look up too, to instruct you to show you the way how do they know the right answers and the right path!

Can you break the path and go your own way or do you follow?