If we could see our childish selves more clearly, we might have a better sense of the course and the character of our lives. My son, who is happy and voluble, is so much fun to be around that I sometimes mourn, on his behalf, his future inability to remember himself. I have no memories of my own feelings, thoughts, or personality I’m told that I was a cheerful, talkative child given to long dinner-table speeches, but don’t remember being so. They also fail to illuminate any inner reality. These disconnected images don’t knit together into a picture of a life. But how much of our joyous life will he remember? What I recall from when I was four are the red-painted nails of a mean babysitter the brushed-silver stereo in my parents’ apartment a particular orange-carpeted hallway some houseplants in the sun and a glimpse of my father’s face, perhaps smuggled into memory from a photograph. My son and I have great times together lately, we’ve been building Lego versions of familiar places (the coffee shop, the bathroom) and perfecting the “flipperoo,” a move in which I hold his hands while he somersaults backward from my shoulders to the ground. I have few memories of being four-a fact I find disconcerting now that I’m the father of a four-year-old.
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