The Marble Collector

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When it comes to my memory there are three categories: things I want to forget, things I can’t forget, and things I forgot I’d forgotten until I remember them.

My earliest memory is of my mum when I was three years old. We are in the kitchen, she picks up the teapot and launches it up at the ceiling. She holds it with two hands, one on the handle, one on the spout, and lobs it as though in a sheaf-toss competition, sending it up in the air where it cracks against the ceiling, and then falls straight back down to the table where it shatters in pieces, murky brown water and burst soggy teabags everywhere. I don’t know what preceded this act, or what came after, but I do know it was anger-motivated, and the anger was my-dad-motivated. This memory is not a good representation of my mum’s character; it doesn’t show her in a good light. To my knowledge she never behaved like that again, which I imagine is precisely the reason that I remember it.

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