By Donna Cameron
Sometimes, family stories are repeated often enough that you’re not sure if you really remember or if the memory has been implanted in you by others. Is that Sunday night at Sabella’s really my first memory? You decide.
My family observed few traditions, but Sunday dinners at my parents’ favorite restaurant was one of them. A high chair would already be in place for me when we arrived. My parents ordered cocktails while they scanned the specials, and I played quietly with some toy they had brought for me.
On that night, I may have leaned over too far, or perhaps someone caught their foot on the leg of the high chair. It started ever so slowly to tip and then it crashed to the floor. A woman—not my mother—shrieked. Then all was silent as everyone waited to hear the chair’s occupant start wailing. I didn’t. In my mother’s frequent retelling of the incident, she looked down to see her 15-month-old toddler lying on her back, grinning, pudgy hands stretched toward her.
The restaurant manager and waitresses rushed over to see if I was hurt. I’m told I smiled merrily at them. My dad picked me up and the manager righted the high chair. Seated in it once again, I looked around, saw everyone watching me, and waved. Which, Mom claimed, earned me a smattering of applause. I have no memory of this approbation, but since beneath all my shyness, I am something of a ham, I believe it may be so.
From this, you might assume that I was an innately sunny baby. Few tears, no tantrums. No fuss. And you may be right. Family legend describes me as placid, smiling, always happy. In photos, I am a dimpled little butterball, eyes bright, usually laughing.
But it’s just as possible that I was merely a quick study. That I knew already ours was not a family where emotions were expressed, or even encouraged. Self-control was rewarded with smiles of approval. Dramatic displays were met with the same tight-lipped aversion that might accompany a piece of rancid meat tossed into the trash.
When, less than a decade later, my father died a lingering death from cancer, we never spoke of it. We pretended until the very end, even as we watched him waste away and suffer unrelenting pain in silence. We mirrored his wordless resignation. There were no goodbyes, no final utterances, no last hugs to tuck away. We had no aptitude for spectacle.
When I tell you this is my earliest memory, I mean to say it was really my first test. I’ve passed it more times than I can count. It’s what we do.
Donna Cameron is the author of the Nautilus award-winning book A Year of Living Kindly. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Thanatos, Eclectica, and many other publications. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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