Memories of Home: A Keepsake You Create

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Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.”— Phyllis Diller And our memories aren’t just suspecetable to suggestion. We are all unreliable narrators of our own stories as we go through life.

Houses are built to live in and not to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.”— Francis Bacon We need help to jog our memory. "When we're younger, an internal cue — just thinking of something — can help retrieve a memory," Dr. Budson says. "But when we're older, we rely more on external cues to retrieve memories, like a sound or an image." Cue the memory Not just holidays and celebrations. Not traditions. Not evenscrapbooks, digital photos, videos, or anything you put on social media to save for the future. How does it feel to be without a home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?”— Bob Dylan Of the many memories you accumulate every day, only those marked as meaningful are recorded in your brain's long-term files. "We have a system in our brains that tags memories that are important in some way so we'll remember them in the future," explains Dr. Andrew Budson, a neurologist and chief of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at VA Boston Healthcare System.

Simple but deep

Be still as you try to summon old memories; close your eyes at times and focus on the sights, sounds, smells, thoughts, and feelings associated with each one. There are very few words that inspire such emotion as the word “home.” Here’s a list of quotes about home, and most people agree that it’s a wonderful place to be. Jump ahead to these sections: Home is where you can say anything you please because nobody pays any attention to you anyway.”— Joe Moore Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”— John Howard Payne

Memories fade with time. If you haven't thought about a memory in years, it won't be as vivid or strong as it used to be. "By not revisiting the memory, you're telling your brain it's not important, and other memories might be laid on top of it," Dr. Budson says. The reason may tap into something far deeper in the human condition – we crave a cohesive narrative of our own existence, and will even invent stories to give us a more complete picture.

Context in the brain

Everybody’s always talking about people breaking into houses, ma’am; but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.”— Thornton Wilder And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil. Ephesians 4:26–27 Memory goes downhill after age 30. "There's good evidence that our ability to retrieve information peaks between ages 20 and 30. By the time we're in our 50s, the frontal lobes, which are in charge of searching for memories, don't work as well as they used to," Dr. Budson says. This phenomenon isn’t limited to physical locations. You may have noticed that when you’re sad about something, you tend to remember other sad events from your life. This is because your mood and emotions also comprise your mental context. Experiments have confirmed that memory is enhanced when your current mood matches the mood in which you learned the information.

A memory of a beloved grandparent or long-gone family pet can bring us happiness, whether it is fictional or not. Memories are malleable and tend to change slightly each time we revisit them, in the same way that spoken stories do,” says Loveday. They are influenced by our perceptions, state of mind, knowledge and even the company we are in when recalling events, which can lend us a new perspective on a familiar life event. “A memory is essentially the activation of neural networks in the brain, which are consistently modified and altered,” she says. “Therefore at each recollection, new elements can easily be integrated while existing elements can be altered or lost.” There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits.”— Robert Southey Be kind.– Sometimeswe treat complete strangersbetter than the people with whom we live. Talkand act at homein ways that show your family how much you love and value them. There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”— Quentin CrispEmotion. "Getting married is an example of a highly emotional event. In that circumstance, a whole host of brain chemicals become active as these memories are being recorded," Dr. Budson says. A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after success.” ~Author Unknown Limits on socialising within care homes and in some cases a ban on any visitors for many months seems to have taken its toll. When we do get the chance to chat, we also have fewer stories to tell. As holidays get cancelled, weddings are postponed, concerts and sporting events go ahead without live audiences, we have less to talk about. And as for tales of woe at work, they’re mainly about the frustrations of technology letting us down. Does the word “home” make you think of family and love? Here are some quotes that give positive and negative views of the home. We think they pair perfectly with songs about family.

There are, of course, several different types of memory. Forgetting what you intended to buy is different from forgetting someone’s name or what you did last Wednesday. But research on how memory works points to several ways in which our newly constrained environment could be having an impact. I don’t care if we have our house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together.”— James Patterson Because you may not spontaneously recall cues related to a long-forgotten memory, you'll have to generate some. Dr. Budson recommends that you try these strategies:

Leave yourbad mood at the door.– If that’s not possible, use words to talk aboutyour mood rather thanemotionally taking that bad mood out on your family. Memorize a verse like 1 Peter 5:6–7 to repeat when you’re mood tanks… The most important thing a man can know is that, as he approaches his own door, someone on the other side is listening for the sound of his footsteps.”— Clark Gable The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”— Maya Angelou This similarity between contexts is important when it comes to retrieving memories. Your brain’s memory search process is rather like a Google search, in that you’re more likely to find what you’re looking for if your search terms closely match the source content. During memory search, your current mental context is your set of search terms. In any given situation, your brain is rapidly rifling through your memories for ones that most closely resemble your current state of context. Simple but deep Use your manners.Say “please and thank you.” Teach table manners. Teach and show respect.Nice matters even at home!