I don’t know what the most popular reason for argument is among family households – domestic chores, homework and sex feature quite highly, I imagine – but there is probably some deeper cause that links all of them. In my household that link is memory.
Being on the wrong side of 60 and with a malfunctioning memory that was never that functional in the first place, I am at the sharp (or possibly blunt) end of this. If I claim I said or didn’t say something, or did or didn’t do something, whether today or last week or last year, my wife and children are able simply to deny it on the basis that I am misremembering.
If I insist that it wasn’t me who left the back door open, or failed to feed the cats, or didn’t post something that I was allegedly meant to post, it is a working assumption that I am guilty – not because I am cynically deceiving anyone but because I just forgot.
Even though I suspect they are right more often than not, this is frustrating because not only do I think I get the blame for a lot of stuff I am innocent of, but also the recognition that one’s memory is imperfect is existentially uncomfortable. My philosophical comeback – that everyone’s memory is a construction, that memory is experimentally proven to be unreliable for young and old, husbands and wives – gets me nowhere. Because the shoe fits, I am forced to wear it.
Realising that what you thought happened might not have happened is one of the rites of passage of maturity – and it is a hard lesson to learn because to understand that even a fully functioning memory is, in fact, fundamentally unreliable, threatens our very sense of self.
Not only is it painful to admit an incorrect recollection because it means you lose the argument, but it also shows you on what fragile ground your perceptions stand. I am gradually coming to terms with this, but the rest of my family, being younger and thus more confident of their faculties, are invariably convinced that the world is exactly how they remember it. And (although this may sound like an excuse from a fogey with a leaky brain) science and biology tells us that this is simply not true. We all make up memories on the spot, mixed in with facts and emotions.
This anxiety has been with me a long time – at least since 2005, when I wrote The Seymour Tapes about a man who secretly videotapes his family because he can’t rely on his own memory. And perhaps the current popular storyline in the Archers, with the gaslighting of Helen Titchener by her husband, Rob, suggests that it is a widespread anxiety. What if what you are sure you remember isn’t true? Are you going crazy? Perhaps.
My wife (jokily, I think) suggests I am gaslighting her when I disagree with one of her memories, and I too have wild theories that my family is conspiring to send me mad and shunt me off to a home by creating an artificial reality I cannot recall. More often than not, I submit to their version of events, even when I’m convinced by my own – because unlike them, I’m no longer convinced of my own conviction.
Nevertheless, doubts about my doubts still remain. In fact, the strategy of my fictional creation, Alex Seymour, becomes more and more seductive. And it’s easier than ever now – a few miniature cameras hidden in the light sockets would do the trick. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to show my family the results – they would get me locked up even quicker – but at least I would find out the truth. The trouble is, I have a terrible feeling it wouldn’t be the truth I was hoping for.
Perhaps I should just forget the whole idea.
