Remember the Time

When I was about five years old, I used to watch movies with my father in our basement. I would sit on his lap while he smoked a cigar and we would watch John Wayne or some other manly person. I still believe that cigar smoke carries the most comforting smell in the world. We would talk through the movies, but for years, I could not remember a single word that passed between us on those nights. I was convinced my father had told me something that proved to be foundational, that helped form the person that I am. I never asked my father because I was afraid he would tell me that I made it all up. This is not a scene that I am willing to sacrifice. I will not risk having to cut it from the movie reel of my memory.

I believe that the scenes that constitute my reality are transgenerational. When I think of those moments that I know have a central and permanent place in my memory, those moments that seem most real to me, those moments that I use to tell me who I am, I see that they are family mythologies, scenes that come through from the past. The memories that make me Christine Anne Taylor are not necessarily my own in the strict sense, but rather memories inherited, or maybe stolen, from family members who died long before I was born. If you asked me to narrate the events of last Monday, we would be in for a snooze. I would look at my date book and read, “Drop off book for L before 6:00.” I can tell you I probably went to the library, read some books, made some photocopies, drank four cups of tea, and smoked three cigarettes. We choose the days we want to remember, the days we want to see as foundational, by narrating them. Memory and narrative are one. Narrative is communication. Thus, memory can be communicated, passed between generations, and I can begin at the beginning.

It is just after one o’clock in the morning on January 31, 1981, in St. Paul, Minnesota. I am hurtling down Interstate 35E with my parents in a Pontiac Bonneville. My father, in the front seat, has vomit on his sweater, and my mother, in the backseat, is hoping that I will please not come out of her birth canal just yet. She has been in labor for hours, but only realized it twenty minutes ago, when her water broke. Her sister Susan likes to tell this story to emphasize how spacey my mom is. I prefer to think it makes her look tough. Dad thanks Mom for her confusion to this day, as it allowed him to stay at the bar until last call. To Dad’s credit, when Dwayne the bartender picked up the phone behind the counter and relayed the message, he didn’t stay to finish that last drink. No, he jumped right in the Bonneville, zipped up Dale Street, and grabbed my mom, who promptly puked on him. Knowing how finicky he was about his clothes, she apologized. They then sped down Larpenteur Avenue and onto 35E, where we first saw them.

By this point, my mom is pretty sure that my head is actually coming out. She doesn’t want to have a baby in a Bonneville. In fact, she isn’t sure if she wants to have a baby at all. Six days ago, she packed up a suitcase, drove to Hudson, Wisconsin, and checked into a Motel 6. But she came back two hours later. She is twenty-three years old and she is married to a man who is twenty years her senior. She is having a baby in a car with velour seats, and she is a little freaked out. However, she is not as freaked out as the sixteen-year-old girl who gets pulled out of a birthing room to make way for the two of us when we finally arrive at the hospital. The nurses think the girl has more time than my mom, but...