Fuzzy Memories and Chinchilla Earmuffs

Today I took the road less traveled and got a speeding ticket. I was driving along Frontage road near the highway; in the middle of a sleepy daydream I was jolted awake by the bleeping siren and neon blue lights of a shiny Dodge Charger and a Ray-Ban-wearing patrolman. I was not in a hurry and I was not driving fast, but I was not paying attention and I was suddenly searching for registration and proof of insurance instead of enjoying a quiet car and a cloudless blue sky. My moment went from insignificant to fateful in a matter of seconds.

I have a horrible memory. Even with the siren and the lights and the accelerated heart rate I experienced today, I will quickly forget the details of what happened if I don't have it in writing (or in court records). Now that my kids are getting older, I have been thinking about what their first memories will be and wondering how much they will retain inside their tiny personal vaults forever. What things will make first impressions in their little minds and what moments will they choose to tuck away in boxes deep in their small souls? They are constantly watching and absorbing; it is exciting and terrifying.

I am in awe of people with brilliant memories. To be a great writer, I think you must either have the discipline to journal constantly or the ability to retain and recall events from the past as though they happened yesterday. I love the writing of Annie Dillard and am amazed and jealous of her ability to retell a childhood story down to the the tiniest details. If you haven't read “An American Childhood,” I recommend it. It is one of the few books I have read more than once; Annie Dillard is the queen of recalling detail and my all-time essay heroin.

All writers and artists are somewhat dependant on memories to prompt new projects and creative ideas. I have always wished I could recall childhood stories like many of my friends, siblings and even my grandparents. My grandma's 70 year old memories are more vivid and clear than many events that happened to me last week. She has a gift for verbally telling a tale, and the art of repeating stories hundreds of times has burned vivid details deeply into her mind. At any rate, my memory is poor and I sometimes rely on my older brother Chad's spongy wizard brain to fill in the blanks of childhood for me.

I was skyping with Chad a few weeks ago and we both agreed there is one memory that will always be our ace in the hole, our trump, our pièce de résistance. It's funny because the details of our experience are murky and scarce for both of us. I'm honestly not sure if there is a story jumbled in the mess of it at all, and I decided to leave it vague—like our memories, rather than ask Mom and Dad to fill in the blanks.

My fondest memory isn't the story of the French foreign exchange student who lived with us but didn't shower for two weeks, although I did discover that my sense of smell truly does heighten and enhance my memories. It isn't the story of having my front tooth knocked out on Christmas Eve in high school or the time my friends and I were detained in police cars after we were caught toilet papering.

Our most precious memories revolve around one little animal with velvety dense fur, beady little eyes and a long poofy tail. In our family there will always be one word that causes our ears to perk up. A word that might sound foreign to some, but is familiar to us. A word that scurries in gently like a fuzzy whisper or the sound of tiny paws running across fresh wood chip shavings. Chinchilla.

If “every man's memory is his private literature” as Aldous Huxley believed, then our chinchilla chapter is full of rising action and conflict. It all started when I was 14 and my entrepreneurial dad was flipping through the LaRue journal. There was an ad for chinchilla farming and I honestly don't know how it all began, but while other kids our age were lazily sleeping in or playing nintendo, Chad and I found ourselves knee deep in filthy wood chips with a barn full of fuzzy chinchillas.

I won't waste time explaining what a beautiful chinchilla “ground squirrel” is. I will leave that to Chinchilla planet.  I will only say that chinchillas are rodents in every sense of the word with the exception of their lush velvety fur. And unfortunately we did not give them little names and keep them for pets in our barn and hold them and teach them circus tricks. Against our teenage wills, we fed and watered and became part of the chinchilla breeder world. Disgruntled, we switched out the wood shavings on Saturday mornings and mumbled things under our breath. Bellyaching, we dumped dirty chips over a ravine on our property and kept track of new chinchilla babies. Sulky and vexed, we complained about the smell and were embarrassed to have 100 things caged in our barn that made us completely different from everyone else we knew.

In the end, which was shortly after the beginning, when it turned out not to be the best time to enter the fur industry, I can't even recall how long we raised chinchillas in our barn.  In fact, I don't know what happened to our chinchilla farm at all, and it's probably better that way.  When I asked Chad where the chinchillas went he said he had always imagined dad in the garage making chinchilla earmuffs. Out of curiosity I googled chinchilla earmuffs and found this: Natural Chinchilla earmuffs for $139. 

For us, the chinchilla story has turned into folklore. It is our ballad and I'm not sure I want to know all the details of why we had them and where they went. The chinchillas brought Chad and I together in a mess of caged ground squirrels and wood chips, shovels and wheelbarrows, brooms and the absence of a Saturday morning in bed. A sound or word will still trigger memories from our bizarre barn business, and the funny thing is, what was once a time of annoyance, disgust, and teenage uprising is now one of our fondest memories and biggest laughs.

There are days when I worry that my kids will experience something traumatic or I will mess up and they will be scarred for life, and I am comforted by the now soft memory of chinchillas. Not only are kids ultra resilient, but if my entrepreneurial spirit takes them on a few crazy rides here and there, it might give them good story fodder down the road. I am also learning that a poor memory is sometimes a blessing; if there is only room for a few memories in the treasury, I can choose the constructive and learn from the lousy.

My kids are losing teeth, learning to pump on a swing set, and growing out of their clothes faster than I can tie a pair of shoes. I'm hopeful that they will be reflective, and I'm anxious to see what childhood memories they will safely preserve. For me, once the chinchilla chapter ended, my memories soon grew fuzzy and funny and perhaps slightly elaborated until eventually it was just nice to have a uniquely eccentric story. New chapters have quickly come, I'm sure there will be a few more sirens and tickets before it's all said and done, and the infinite memories break down into compost in a wood chip ravine.