At least that’s how I remember it
With all that has happened over the last couple of years and being that my age is, ahem, advanced, I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about memories. But I’ve decided that I might be losing my mind as I discuss those memories with my mom.
When we are young, our thoughts are filled with the future and all of its, and our, potential. The way we remember what has happened in the past is not terribly refined because we haven’t really been thinking about it too much. It is only as we age that we begin to be struck by things that remind us of events from our past, and sometimes those memories are a bit cloudier than we might realize.
And by cloudier I mean wrong or downright fabricated. It’s not malicious, of course, but sometimes we remember things very differently from those around us, even those with pivotal roles in the stories in question. Here is a funny example that comes to mind.
When I was young, Mom started making a recipe that has become a real staple in my family, mayonnaise muffins. Yep, that part of this story is absolute, it is muffins made with mayonnaise.
It is a simple recipe that includes 2 cups of selfrising flour, 1 cup of milk or buttermilk and ½ cup of mayonnaise. The fun part of the recipe is that you can add all sorts of things to the mix to make different flavors of muffins.
Our most frequent version is to add cheddar cheese for a delicious pairing with all sorts of soups and stews, but there are a myriad of ways we have made them over the years.
Though the ingredients don’t give the impression, these are the most moist and fluffy and delicious muffins and I have always loved them, no matter what version they come in. Just thinking about them has me wishing to abandon this story and head to the kitchen, but I will wait.
Whenever I make them for guests I love to tell the story about how Dad didn’t like mayonnaise and when he found out the muffins were based on it, he decided he didn’t want to eat them anymore. However, when he had them at a friend’s house, he went on about how good they were, much to Mom’s chagrin and everyone’s amusement.
A couple of years ago I quizzed Mom on the chocolate version I remembered her making. I had a vivid recollection of a delicious chocolate-y version that she made us for a treat at breakfast. Maybe they had chocolate chips, maybe not, and I wanted her to remind me how she made them.
Well, it turned out that Mom had no idea what I was talking about. She had never made a chocolate version and didn’t understand why I had such a vivid memory of such.
It is the craziest thing to me that I have a visceral recollection of something that apparently never even existed. So much so that I have intended for a while to try and create a chocolate mayonnaise muffin concoction to see if I can re-create that memory, though it is seemingly completely made up.
How in the world does that happen?
Well, hold on to your seat, because I have just learned that the story about Dad not liking the muffins isn’t true, either.
I called Mom as I began writing to ask her where she came up with the recipe in the first place, and as I reminded her of that silly anecdote, she paused and then quietly told me that Dad actually liked mayonnaise.
“But, I’ve been telling that story for years,” I protested. “Yes,” she said, “but I felt bad about correcting you because you were so sure it had happened.”
My mother is the kindest of people who hated to tell me that I was remembering it incorrectly, and so a legend has been perpetuated through the ages.
After I got over the devastation I laughed, because it even better proved my intended point that we often remember things differently from those around us.
As I struggled to figure out how the story even started, she told me that my uncle, Duane, hated mayonnaise and she once made a chocolate cake that had mayonnaise in it and that he wouldn’t eat it once he found out.
So, just like that, it all made sense, sort of. The part about the disdain for mayonnaise, the chocolate part that I remember so fondly, the male character’s refusal to eat it, are all true — but in a completely different combination than I had in my mind.
My recipe of the facts was completely muddled as it has tumbled across the years, but I have to admit that it has me questioning how I remember everything I ever experienced as a child.
Forgive me as I reconsider my entire history, and yet gloat in the knowledge that my point has been more deeply validated than I expected.
There are two sides to every story, as they say, and then there is the faded side that has been tumbled through the years of recollection.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t trust any story that I have shared here, but I do think that we are all guilty of remembering things the way that we want to remember them, so we should always consider the other possibilities. Be it our simple family history or the broader history that shapes the decisions we make today, we should always consider that there might be a bit of angles smoothed out. For better or worse, the way we remember it may not be quite the way it actually happened.
I think I’ll go make some muffins and think about that.