A Small Act of Rebellion
A Small Act of Rebellion
I have no real memory of it, our combined fraternal rebellion, though I believe it really did happen. Or maybe it's just a story, a scrap of family mythology, a convenient fiction co-authored by my brother and me and held onto by us both as anchor? Like the legend of my falling from the bedroom window, and my brother, my putative protector and hero, aged eight or nine, running to fetch the galvanised bath to try to catch me. I do not remember the fall, or the appearance of a tin bath, but if fall I did, I survived it more or less unscathed. Unlike that other incident. That, I can picture as if it really did happen. But unlike other memories, it is not dynamic. It is more a snapshot, a static image of a moment, but that must have had a finite span - an incident in time that has remained as background to my life, simultaneously haunting and eluding me, in too many ways shaping what I am.