Media has changed everything, even our memories.
I have been brought up in a rural environment in the Hungarian countryside. I have grown into a post-communist community of 3000 people with whom Ihave found it hard to connect. My childhood was not their childhood. So in my loneliness I was restless to feel the sense of community and it came with a series entitled 'Road to Avonlea'.
Now, that I look back at that times, and watch the series, memories come up in me. Memories of the idea in my head about childhood. I've come to realize that those innocent imaginings of mine about the series have become the part of my identity, the way I look back at my childhood years. I have no idea whether it's good or bad, but I kinda feel my childhood wrapped in these lines:
“I will never forget the days of my youth, when the waves rippled between my toes taking the pink and silver grains of sand back out to the depths of the sea. There was a peace then and indescribable feeling of immortality that happened in the ebb and flow of tide and seemingly endless stretch of beach and sky. Now as I gaze out open the same sparkling waters, I realize that youth is never left behind. It is carried always gently in the heart.” (Hetty in Road To Avonlea)
And, though I have never seen the ocean, I have never been to Canada, I still feel that some memorable months of my childhood was spent there in an imaginary town of Montgomery's called Avonlea. As I watch the series again, pictures come up from my mind that I so like to remember.
Beloved by Toni Morrison