I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

I remember when I learned I wasn't Catholic. I was on the playground with my friends Maggie and Jackie, and they were talking about their preparations for their First Holy Communions. I asked what a First Holy Communion was, and they laughed, assuming that I had to know, and when they realized that I truly didn't, they became a little confused. They assured me that every girl had a First Communion and that I would be having one very soon because first grade was the year when you had one. That night, I asked my mother why I didn't yet know about this rite of passage awaiting me somewhere in the very near future, and she, who had been raised Catholic, laughed and explained what a First Holy Communion was. There is only one part of this explanation that I remember, or which was actually clear to me at the time: The past Christmas, she had given me a box of dress-up clothes that she collected at the Salvation Army, and she told me now that the white dress my friends and I always used as the wedding dress was really a First Communion dress. I thought about how Jackie had come over and pretended that dress was a wedding dress, and wondered if she had known then that it was really a First Communion dress and that she was going to get to wear a similar one for a real ceremony.

It seemed that Maggie and Jackie also consulted their mothers, for the next day at school, they were more accepting of the fact that I was not going to have a First Communion. The problem was that they both wanted to invite me to their First Communions because I was their best friend, but they told me that only Catholic people were allowed to go. (I believe now that their initial disbelief ensued from their assumption that I, as their best friend, had to be Catholic, rather than their belief that every girl in the world had a First Holy Communion, and that they just chose to express this in the universal manner at which young girls are so adept.) Eventually, the thing became so confused that Maggie's mother actually called my mother to invite me to Maggie's First Communion, and my mother made up some excuse about why I couldn't go even though I didn't have anything to do on that day and actually could have gone. It was okay with me that she lied about this because I regretted very much that I wasn't going to have a First Communion, and knew that going to Maggie's would make me want to have one even more which would make me even sadder. I pictured it as a warmly lit ceremony, sacred and delicate as the sugar shell of my diorama Easter egg, comprised of dozens of beautiful, beaming, first-grade brides.

posted by Caitlin 11:47 PM
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