The Nature of Childhood Memories
DISCLAIMER : This blog contains acts that would most likely be not advisable to repeat.
After a bit of light reading about how memories are formed in childhood, it seems that routines help us remember how to do tasks but for out of the ordinary memories we need specific stimulus to capture a new memory. Odors take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory, according to a Harvard Gazette article I found.
Notably there is the Proust Effect which refers to "the emotionality and vividness of re-experiencing autobiographical memories triggered by the senses", named for Marcel Proust who is reminded of his childhood by the taste of a madeleine cake in his book In Search of Lost Time.
Visual childhood memories that I have that include nature are camping along the Berg River in a fixed tent that my grandparents left erected and went to on weekends. The shaded areas next to the rivier, where we swam, floated and built dams in the tea-coloured water.
What I also remember are when I had tasted new things in the veld – friends had picked “surings” in the neighbourhood and put them in their mouths, so I followed suit. They taste sour and are stringy and you really must chew on the thin stalks to get any substance worked up, but sour from the first bite.
I have a nephew who cannot pass up an Australian cherry tree (Syzygium australe) without plucking the fruit, as the trees are popular as screening trees and they are found in a lot of South African gardens.
Why are there so few fruit trees in South African gardens now? I remember plum and loquat trees in backyards I frequented as a child. Thank goodness you can still find the bags of pecan nuts when traveling around the Kruger National Park that I remember.
I remember friends plucking Erica cruenta and sucking the nectar from the flower and some adventurous soul demonstrating how to wear a hibiscus stamen as a horn on their nose, aided by the amount of stickiness at the base of the stamen.
I am joined by some fellow nature journalers in remembering their childhoods, Siziwe Hlongwa, and mother and daughter duo Marié H and Marié J du Toit.
What smells, sounds and sights make childhood memories come rushing back?
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