The headwaters of memory

My twin brother, Leif, has a fleeting interest in astrology. Not run-of-the-mill find your horoscope in the back of the news astrology, but the deep esoteric roots of astrology. Me, I am not so interested. Still, when Leif showed me an astrology book that contained character traits associated with the time of our birth (year, month, day, hour, minute, location, etc.), he had my rapt attention. The book described our personalities remarkably well. Among the traits described was the never ending child. That  never ending child.

In the 3rd grade I heard my classmates talking about what sports they wanted to play in high school, where they wanted to go to college, etc. It didn't make sense to me. I was fully content being a kid. I promised myself then that I would never grow up. Arrive at the present. Because technically I am no longer a child, but without a doubt still retain a child's thinking, I tend to live in the past. I have always had a fondness for history  and the past. We moved a great deal as I was growing up (still moving a great deal now). So, longing for that place we last lived, those friends left behind, that sense of belonging, also has me living in the past more than most people do. Result, memory tends to dominant my thinking more and more. I also found that after my daughter was born memories from my childhood began flooding in at random. And I mean immediately after she was born. Here's a few quick examples:

I recalled dreaming of my grandmother's house in New Jersey. In my dream it is her house, though I suspect I never went to that house. All of my actual memories of Grandma Diss are from Boulder, Colorado, not New Jersey. But after Solveig was born, this dream I had when I was perhaps five years old jumped right out. It's just me wandering though curtained rooms full of covered furniture, very quiet and mysterious. Below is a picture of Grandma Diss in New Jersey for Aunt Diana's wedding. This was well before I was born, but it reminds me of her life in New Jersey, dramatically different from the colorful later-day hippie-lady she became in Boulder.

 
Another odd memory that popped into my head was a graphic novel my parents bought for Leif and I when we lived in Alpine Texas: "Comanche Moon!" by Jack Jackson. Several illustrations from the novel came back to me, as well as the general outline of Quanah Parker's life. He was the last chief of the Comanche, and technically never surrendered to the US Gov. His mother, Cynthia Anne Parker, was a Anglo American kidnapped as a young girl by the Comanche. She became the wife of a prominent Comanche chief and essentially became a full Comanche herself. Later in life she was recaptured by US soldiers (or Texas Rangers?). Separated from her "true" family, she died not too long after of a broken heart. Why the heck did this all randomly come back to me? I went to a local Multnomah County Library (Hollywood District) in Portland and actually found the same graphic novel. Of course I checked it out and read through it once again, some 27 or 28 years after my first reading. It was still a fascinating and beautiful book. Here's the cover and an interior illustration. I must say that at age 9 or 10 text held much less interest for me than pictures, and I was a little below reading level for my age. Last of all, though I clearly remember the book, my memory is a little fuzzy on where my parents purchased it. However, as I sit here writing, I believe it was at one of Big Bend National Park's book stores. Ah, more memories come floating in. Such a magical place the Big Bend was. How does one dig out of these memories, or give them a gentle embrace and let them float on their way?