by Jill Price
As I’ve reflected on how the fact that my mind has stored so many memories starting so early has affected my life, I’ve come to realize that one of the most profound ways is that I have not really wanted to leave the past. For whatever reason, and somewhat ironically, from early on, I came to hate the idea of change. I never really felt excitement about new stages of my life as I know so many people do at junctures in their lives, such as when graduating from college. I never wanted to move on to new things, at least not until I met my husband.
I think I would have liked to stay in our apartment in New York with my mom and dad and brother and all our relatives and my dad’s clients coming over all the time for the rest of my life, and I intensely envy people who have lived in the same home their whole lives. Before long, I was to move away from New York to the suburb of South Orange, New Jersey, and though that first move was not unduly upsetting, at some point in my years in South Orange, I developed a profound attachment to my home there. When my family later moved from there to Los Angeles, the trauma of that move may well have played a role in the way my memory began to intensify not long after.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Remains of the Days
Home is the place where, when you have to go
there, they have to take you in.
I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.
—Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”
The old saying “home is where the heart is” does not even begin to express the degree of attachment I have felt to my homes. In fact, I have never left home. I was in the process some years ago of moving out on my own, to live with the man I’d fallen in love with and married, but that’s a story I’ll save to tell later.
Early on, I became so deeply rooted to home that the thought of moving from my house absolutely terrified me. I also early on became intensely attached to what I call the artifacts of my life, from toys to records to notes from friends, and what was to become a vast storehouse of mementos. It seems that these two phenomena are interrelated: the need to keep things and the need to stay in the same place have been, I think, different facets of the intense dread I’ve had about change.
There is an odd irony about this. Although I remember the days and places and conversations and events of so much of my life so well, from early on I have felt an urgent desire to hold on to those days and places and events—and also to the things of my life. I can’t say exactly why this is true, but I have found that holding on to the artifacts of my life gives me great comfort. Having actual things that are attached to the memories swirling in my head seems to make the strangeness of living in the past at the same time as the present less surreal.
The irony of wanting to keep a hold on the places and the artifacts of my life makes me think about the great Twi
light Zone episode about a man who loves to read so much that he just wants to escape from life so that he can read all day. One day he goes down into a bank vault to hide away and read while he should be working, and he is the only survivor of a nuclear Armageddon. When he comes out of the vault, the landscape around him is a wasteland, and he’s alone. At first he’s delighted, because he’ll get to read as much as he wants, but then he trips and his glasses fall off, and while he’s looking for them, he steps on them and crushes the lenses. There he is, with all the time he ever wanted for reading, and now he can’t see.
My memory means I don’t need photographs to remind me of how my family and friends and my houses and home towns looked when I was growing up or to call to mind my favorite vacations and holidays. I can travel back to any home I’ve lived in and remember it vividly—taking it with me, in effect, when moving to a new one. Though one would think that would give me all the freedom in the world from any need to keep mementos or to keep a diary of key life events, it’s just the opposite.
When I was three, I began to collect all the important items of my life, almost all of which I’ve kept. These included a small army of dolls, from a beloved collection of Madame Alexander dolls and Barbies, to the Sunshine Family and Dawn dolls, as well as the beloved doll carriage I received as a gift when I was seven. Then there is my host of stuffed animals, including 150 Beanie Babies. I amassed a treasure trove of Cinderella records and books, as well as a horde of Flintstones memorabilia—anything Flintstones that I could get my hands on back in the 1970s. I’ve kept every record I was ever given or bought—my first 45 was Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” I have all the Golden Books my parents gave me, as well as the little white rocking chair that the William Morris Agency gave to my parents the day I was born. Though it may seem an odd memento, I’ve also kept one of my dresser drawers from when I was five; I loved that dresser.
In 1982 I started to make tapes of songs off the radio that I labeled meticulously by season and year, and I kept that up until 2003. I still have all of those tapes. In late 1988, I started making videos of TV shows, and I have a collection of close to a thousand of them. I also started an entertainment log in August 1989 in which I wrote down the name of every record, tape, CD, video, DVD, and 45 that I own.
My obsession about keeping things even extended for a while to making some record of everyone who had visited our house. In sixth grade, I decided that I wanted anyone who came over to our house to sign an autograph book I’d been given. For the next couple of years, all those who walked into my house would be asked to sign it.
My parents have always been understanding about my need to keep things, allowing me to fill my bedroom full of my “collection.” In October 1991 I took over my brother Michael’s room when he moved out, and filled it full too. To anyone but me, my room probably looked like an attic, though it was important to me that everything was kept in a strict order, and my room was never a mess. I arranged my dolls in a specific way on my bed and my bookshelves; even when I put them in the stroller and walked them around the streets of New York, I had to make sure they were in the same order every time.
Five years ago my parents finally convinced me to move most of my collection into a storage unit when they were moving out of the house I lived in for twenty-seven years in LA. We rented a large storage container, and I was packing all of my things up for weeks, which was horribly stressful and upsetting, though ultimately I think it has been good for me, and I still know exactly where everything is. As I reflect on what my parents have put up with, I am grateful that they were so accommodating of this obsession of mine.
When it came to moving, my need for rootedness and for holding on to the physical situation of my life was harder for them to accommodate. It didn’t start out that way. When I was five years and three months old, in early 1971, my family moved from Manhattan to South Orange, New Jersey, and reflecting on that move now, considering how traumatic moving became for me later, it’s almost miraculous to me how readily I adjusted.
My brother was sixteen months old and growing fast, and the New York apartment was getting a bit tight for all four of us. The idea of moving out of the city wasn’t particularly upsetting to me, and I was excited to go with my parents when they took me and my grandmother with them to see a house in South Orange. That house was a beautiful three-story red brick colonial with big windows framed by black shutters, and several large trees in the front yard, with a flagstone walkway leading from the sidewalk to the front door. We had a big entry area and foyer, with a spiral staircase, and a lovely dining room, with a swinging door into the kitchen that was painted an incredibly bright and cheery yellow. We also had a great den, with brown shag carpeting (so ’70s) and a guest room on the first floor where Michael and I watched endless hours of TV.
I fell in love with the house immediately, especially my bedroom. It was a good-sized square room, with pale yellow walls and plenty of space for all of my furniture and toys. I was especially delighted by a set of built-in shelves where I could arrange my dolls, pictures, and books in just the order I liked to keep them. The basement had a huge p
layroom and a bar room with a restaurant-style bar and a table and booth with red cushions on the seats. The attic, magical to me, had pull-down steps in the upstairs hallway, and I’d go up there and hang out amid the boxes of our things packed away. The smell of that attic is dear to me.
The day we went to see the house, it was snowing, and my grandmother had me so bundled up that I could hardly see through the red wool scarf she had tied around my neck and most of my face. I had another of those little childhood traumas that day. As the adults walked through the rooms, I decided to take a look around for myself, and when I walked out a back door, it locked behind me. When I tried to get back in, I thought I must have tried the wrong door, and I panicked and ran around the house twice before my dad found me.
The small school I attended was behind our house, and our backyard was enclosed by a fence with a gate that led right to the yard of the school. One of the best things about the house was that backyard. I had loved the garden at our apartment building, but this was going to be ours alone. It was rimmed with trees, and we had a swing set and lots of room to play. Moving into that house was the only time in my life that I have felt excited about a new place to live.
I did go through a bit of sadness as we were packing the New York apartment. I remember sitting with my dad on the rolled-up carpet in the New York living room watching the movers and saying to him, “Well, I guess we’re really doing it.” My dad was completely happy about the move, but my mom and I both had a combination of excitement and sadness, and the first night in the new house my mom cried, which started Michael and me crying too. But we all adjusted quickly.
Our neighborhood was full of kids, and a group of seven of us played all the time: three Roberts, Judy, Jeffrey, Michael, and me. We played Running Bases, Red Rover, and games we just made up at the moment. Backyards are like individual magic kingdoms to children, and we had our own mythical Middle Earth to play in.
One of the things I remember most vividly about South Orange is the distinctive musty smell, which was particularly strong during the hot summer months. I love it when those summer days pop into my head. When I returned to New Jersey in August 1986 and again in August 1996, there was that familiar musty smell, and it brought me right back to those days playing in my driveway and running wildly around my backyard.
I had a harder time adjusting to school than I did about moving to the house. When I started at Newstead School in April 1971, I was at the end of kindergarten. I was the “new girl,” and even though my class had only eight kids in it, I was desperately shy and spent the first three weeks hiding in my cubby. My teacher, Mrs. McGriff, was a wonderful educator who understood about children’s lives. She recommended to my mom that she invite my class to my house to have cookies and get to know me, and I remember vividly how proud I was to show everyone where I lived. Then, to celebrate Flag Day, my class put on a play, The Big Birthday, and Mrs. McGriff made me the star of the play. From then on, I loved that school.
Because I was blissfully happy in those years in South Orange, I was distraught when I learned at eight that we were going to be moving to Los Angeles. Any child feels dread about moving, of course, even if it’s just to a new school, not a new town or state. We tend to think that children readily get over that sort of trauma. Some people may even think that moving during childhood is good for kids, helping them to develop social skills and learn to accept change and adapt. That may well be true for most children. For me, the experience was wrenching, and I think it had long-term impact. A fascinating question about why that has been true is whether it was due to the way my memory was already developed by that time, causing me to be so rooted to place and to hate change so much, or whether the trauma I experienced from the move perhaps exacerbated in some way the workings of my memory.
Scientists don’t know why my memory changed at this time—whether it was due to some sort of physical development that was programmed into my brain’s growth genetically or was perhaps caused by the emotional trauma of the move. Given that my brain scans show that my brain has some structural features that are a great deal different from the norm, perhaps my memory functioning was developing in certain ways by that time. At this point in the study of my memory, it’s impossible to know. All I know for sure is that it was after our move from South Orange that the first big change in my memory happened, and my mind started to fill up more and more with memories.
When I think about our move to California, it’s clear enough to me intellectually that I should have been thrilled to go, especially since I had enjoyed visits out to LA so much for the year before we actually moved. My father was offered a job at Columbia Pictures Television, at the Burbank Studios, as an executive in charge of television production, a dream opportunity for him. For a year, he lived in LA on his own, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and my mother, Michael, and I visited him regularly.
I loved those trips, and I had no idea that after that first year, we were going to move to LA too. Dad usually stayed in a regular room at the hotel, but when we came to visit, he would get a bungalow for us. We would hang out at the pool and see lots of celebrities, and though I’d grown up meeting celebrities, this was more exciting because it was Hollywood and so glamorous. I also got to know lots of the children of celebrities. During one stay I hung out a lot with Neil Sedaka’s daughter, and on another I chummed around in particular with Red Buttons’s daughter. A man named Sven ran the pool. He was a beautiful blond guy who wore white shorts and a white shirt and made sure that we always had the same chairs around the pool.
The hotel and grounds were so safe that Michael and I were allowed to roam freely during the day. I felt like the character Eloise, the star of a series of children’s books about a little girl who lived at the Plaza Hotel and got into all sorts of mischief. The hotel felt like my second home. I loved getting into bed and always having clean, cold, new sheets, and the smell and the feeling of them. I also especially loved going to breakfast downstairs and then heading to the gift shop to buy Reeds, candies like Lifesavers. The first time I was in that shop, I bought a map to the movie stars’ houses, which I still have. I also loved just sitting in the lobby and watching the uniformed man who was always there. He would call out to people who had a phone call or a message, walking around with a sign and saying, “Calling Mr. Smith, calling Mr. Smith…”
My mom would take us shopping sometimes too, and I was in awe of the boutiques on Rodeo Drive. One time we had finished shopping in Beverly Hills and were eating at the restaurant Nate ’n Al’s, and Milton Berle just walked right over to the table and grabbed my cheeks and squeezed them and told me how cute I was. My grandmother, who came out to LA with us often, was such a fan of his that she told me I couldn’t wash my face for a week because Milton Berle had pinched my cheeks.
Among my favorite things to do when we visited LA was to go to Burbank Studios with my dad. The walls in the hallway were lined with pictures of all the Screen Gems shows like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, and I spent hours walking up and down those halls looking at them. The most special day there was when I saw David Cassidy. For two years, I had had a huge crush on him, and I had made my dad take me to see him in concert at Madison Square Garden. There I was at the Burbank Studios one day, wandering around the Columbia offices by myself, and I heard someone behind me. Instead of turning around to look, I bent down and looked backward between my legs, and who was it? David Cassidy. I let out a shriek and took off running.
I also loved playing on the lot of Burbank Studios, especially on the set of The Waltons, a show I watched religiously. I would swing on the swings and feed the chickens, and run gleefully around the house, which was just a facade and floor. I was a wonderfully fortunate child, and I so wish that I had been happy about actually moving out to California. But when the time came, I was devastated.
In the spring of 1974, my parents decided that all of the travel back and forth was too difficult, and we moved into a rented house in LA, but even then I th
ought the move was only going to be temporary. I was still terribly upset that I had to move most of my collection into our attic in South Orange because my parents had rented our house out to another family. I could live with this situation because I knew all of my things were protected, and it was only going to be for a year. Then we were going to be moving back to New Jersey and I could put everything back in place.
The moment that I was told that we were going to be staying in LA is one of my most emotionally upsetting early memories. I was in the bathtub in my parents’ bathroom of our rented house in LA in April 1975 when I got the news. I was washing with a bar of Irish Spring, which may be the reason I hate the smell of that soap. My mom came in and told me we were not going back to New Jersey and were going to be buying a house in LA. I was distraught. That was the most traumatic moment of my young life, and it was at this time that I started to truly obsess about how happy I’d been in New Jersey and New York. I started making lists of my friends from back east, constantly looking at pictures of our New Jersey house and thinking about the past all the time.
For whatever reason, right after I got to LA, I began to develop much more complete and vivid memories. From July 1, 1974, on, I remember in much more detail. I was eight, and I know—and have always felt, even then—that my memory underwent a deep and basic change of some kind.
The move was grueling. I was upset all the time in those last days in New Jersey and my friends were upset too. The night before we left the house, my mom, Michael, and I sat in my mom’s room crying because we didn’t want to leave. I felt my world was shattering. My friends gave me a going-away party, and my present was a little phone book, with a cover that looked like blue jeans, with my name on it. They had put all their addresses and phone numbers in it, which made it the perfect gift for me. I crammed that and all sorts of mementos from New Jersey into a camel-colored corduroy pocketbook and took to thinking of the contents of that pocketbook as all my worldly possessions from New Jersey. I put notes from friends that I’d saved in it, lists of names of my friends, pictures that I’d drawn of my house, a set of photos of all the rooms in the house that my mom took for me, and photos from my going-away party. I felt that I had captured my life in New Jersey in that little purse, and I still have it, still crammed full of all of those artifacts of a time I still find special. To have those lists of names and pictures and notes made me feel that I had the people still with me, and from then on, it has been important to me to keep all sorts of mementos of that kind.