mindscrape

I had a migraine yesterday afternoon, and when I got rid of it, I started having all kinds of memories of details from my childhood. As I was lying in bed to go to sleep, I started to remember the house we moved out of when I was 4 (my son's age now). I remembered the playroom and the bathroom/shower in the basement, and the furnace room. I remember sitting on the floor of the furnace room playing with my mom, and I was playing with a beanbag. Some of the beans came out and were lying on the floor. A spider crawled across one of the beans and I picked the bean up and put it in my mouth. I remember my mom freaking out about that.

Just as I was typing that, I remembered sitting under a black walnut tree in the alley behind that house and using a hammer to crack open walnuts. I can remember their earthy taste and slightly rubbery texture. I think that might have been the first time I ever tried walnuts of any kind. I must have been 2 or 3.

I remember my rocking horse, Spotty, and I remember calling him potty because I knew I wasn't supposed to. I remember that someone had squished a tomato in a wooden box by the stairs, and the seeds had dried onto the bottom of the box. I remember pointing at the seeds whenever we came out of that room and saying "verrr," by which I meant that someone had gotten in trouble for doing the tomato squishing thing.

I remember eating green tomatoes out of the garden, and I remember my mom telling me not to. I remember when she made a toy bow and arrow for me out of some sticks. I think it worked better than she thought it would, because I certainly don't remember ever playing with it again. I remember sitting on the back steps with my older brother watching my younger brother eating dirt and saying "Up your wiener with a vacuum cleaner" and getting in trouble for it. I remember taking my mom's sunglasses and using them to look at the sun, which I knew I wasn't supposed to. I remember trying to use my brother's radio earbud from his Bionic Man toy to listen to the radio by clipping it onto the heater vent. It didn't work.

I find it puzzling and somewhat alarming that all these memories are coming back to me after having that migraine. As far as migraines go for me, it was a fairly serious one, as it involved an actual headache. Usually I just feel stupid and perhaps a bit nauseus. Did I knock something loose in there? The brain is a weird freaking organ.