When My Grandmother Destroyed My Toy on Purpose
And my childhood innocence with it
I love Disney Pixar movies. At one point in my life, I counted all my favorites, and the list was twenty-three items long. One of them is Inside Out, the one that reveals how a child’s personality is shaped by all their experiences. It perfectly represents the connection between emotions and memories, the importance of core memories that influence one’s character — expressed with personality islands in the movie, which can emerge but also demolish — and how, with time, different emotions could be connected to memories, core and normal.
This is the story of one of my core memories.
I don’t have a crisp first image of my grandmother. Now, as I try my best to think hard and catch whatever resurfaces, I see her coming to pick me up at kindergarten. Maybe that is as early as I can go. It is a faded picture without clear lines or shapes. It’s more like a blurred, suspicious feeling mirrored on the surface of a calm river moments before sunup.
My mother’s exact arrangement with my grandmother regarding the care for her children is unknown to me, but I know she was on grandma’s duty a lot. I was the second child; Mom gave birth to my sister twelve years earlier, just two weeks prior to her twentieth birthday.
