Memories of Dad, and Dad's Memory

I am always amazed at people who have great recall of their childhood memories. Mine have always been sketchy. I do have some stray memories from very early childhood. I recall being frightened of a green light and what I thought were people like critters in white. I asked Mom if I had been in the hospital with asthma . She insisted it never happened. It came up one day when Dad was around. He had an excellent memory and he remembered me being in the hospital and he thought it was at age 1 or so. He got the baby books out and it was true. I'd had a serious asthma attack at age 11 months, allergic to peas, and ended up in the hospital. The green light was some kind of x-ray machine, a flouroscope (?) and the white clad staff was checking for pneumonia. In the forties they didn't allow parents in keep the child company. It's not a perfect memory, the terror is what I recalled and the green light that had become a recurring nightmare in my life. Mostly when my asthma was acting up. I was over 40 when I got the answer and the green lit dream went away.

Now Dad had a nearly perfect memory. He could read a book and then quote you page after page of it. He knew many poems in their entirety. Often he could tell you what page a particular passage was on. He was a scientist and his recall worked just as well for those long tomes of numbers and facts and theories. When he was in his 80's he lamented that his memory wasn't all it was but I could never tell and it was always better than mine. When we were kids he was a walking encyclopedia for the four of us. If we saw a butterfly, he knew it's common name, it's scientific name, what it ate, how it lived, how it reproduced. Same thing for fish, trees, and critters of all sorts. He could show you all the constellations and he knew where they'd be at different times of years. Trips were illustrated with his commentary about the geologic features of the region, how to find agates, how to tell fool's gold from the real deal, how not to get lost in the woods, what to do if you did, and so on. Even in his last years if I couldn't find an answer to something I could call him and get the answer even though much of his early teaching centered around us learning to find those things out for ourselves. We are all still library affectionados, living surrounded by books, dictionaries, thesaurus, and now our computers. Something strange or amiss, look it up. Something new going on - same thing. Thanks Dad.