I don't have many memories from before I was about ten, eleven. My oldest brother can remember things from when he was three and I was five, and I can't. It's kind of weird, but it does make me treasure the few clear memories I do have much more.
I remember seeing the Berlin Wall fall (and I seem to be under the impression that it was live, but didn't the Wall fall lateish at night when nine-year old girls should've been in bed already?) on TV. I remember sitting cross-legged, back against the couch (I always did prefer the ground to the couch), watching hitory happen. I remember that exactfeeling, that first time I actually became aware of a world outside of family and school. I knew, of course, because I knew what the Berlin Wall was, and what it meant, and what the destruction of it was, but this was the first time I actually realised it.
I remember standig in the kitchen, looking up at my mother and I think my grandmother talking about vegetables and which ones were okay to eat and which ones weren't. Tsjernobil.
I have a whole collection of memories from the yearly three-day car rides to the South of France, and most of them involve singing. I always liked to sing, and we'd always ask dad to sing with us, because we couldn't ever remember the lyrics, and I couldn't keep a tune on my own and would always throw off my brother, and anyway, when it came down to it, I much preffered listening to my dad snig songs like The Internationale and Lied der Bannelingen (the final song of Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo) and other random socialist songs, but mainly those two. At seven, those were my favourite songs, and still every time I hear them I feel the need to sing along at the top of my lungs, in that really annoying shade of just-slightly-off-key that I realise now must've driven my mother insane.
I remember hours upon hours of familiy to-do's, during which I, by virtue of being by far the eldest of my generation on one side, and by not-qoute-so-far youngest of my generation on the other, had the pleasure of listening to the adults' conversation about, mainly, politics. (That's not sarcasm, btw. I loved listening to the grown-ups talk politics. I still do, especially since now I feel more-or-less qualified to actually participate in said conversations.) What my brother was doing during all this, I can't remember. In all probability, he was doing what I did when i wasn't being a little pot with big ears: reading. We were easy kids to entertain.
Are you seeing a pattern, here? That's right, politics and socialism. Oh, I have other memories, mostly to do with books - where I was when I first read them, what I was lisenting to, how enthralled I was by them, what I should've been doing instead of reading (usually schoolwork) - but most of them, and surely most of the clearest ones, are about my political and ethical education.
I was bred, born and raised into having political views and thoughts and logic, into debating and theorising. And it's all my dad's fault.
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