Memory shapes not only how we remember our past, but how we understand ourselves. This first essay explores why those childhood memories continue to echo throughout our lives.

There are moments from childhood that remain so vivid to me, even with the passage of time.

I still remember the smell of damp coats hanging one on top of another behind the kitchen door, the warmth of a coal fire after coming in from playing outside or walking home from the sweet shop, the excitement of waiting in the town square for a bus that might bring someone you loved home, and the strange silence of the house when everyone else was asleep and I crept downstairs to finish a book or that week's comic. I remember them with remarkable clarity.

Or at least, I think I do.

As I have grown older, I have begun to wonder how much of what I remember is memory—and how much is meaning.

I've come to realise that memory isn't a photograph carefully stored away in a drawer. It's far more fluid than that. Every time we revisit it, we polish some parts, soften others, occasionally embellish them, and sometimes fill in the spaces without even realising we're doing it.

Two people can live through the same afternoon and carry entirely different versions of it for the rest of their lives. I often found this true when discussing stories with my grown-up siblings now and seeing others' perspectives, and what they remember - little details that can make a lot of difference in how you think about an incident or event.

That thought has fascinated me for years.

Perhaps that is why I eventually found myself writing fiction.

People often assume that novels begin with imagination. For me, they begin with questions. Questions about my own life. Questions that have stayed with me for years. Somehow, I believed that if I wrote it down, it would become clearer.

Why does one child remember a family gathering as full of laughter while another remembers only tension? Why does one house become a place of comfort in someone's memory while another remembers only wanting to escape it? Why do some moments stay with us forever while others quietly disappear? I think memory quietly shapes who we become. I don't believe it is simply about recalling the past.

Sometimes it gives us strength.

Sometimes it leaves us carrying burdens we don't even realise we're carrying.

Sometimes, in a way, it protects us by softening some painful moments. At other times it refuses to let certain experiences fade, no matter how much we wish they would.

The older I have become, the more I appreciate that memory is deeply connected to identity. We often introduce ourselves through stories rather than facts. We say, "I grew up here," or "My father always..." or "When I was a child..." Long before we realise it, our memories have become the framework through which we understand ourselves.

For a long time, I wanted to begin again every time I met someone new. To be liked before anyone knew very much about me. To leave parts of my past behind and simply start afresh. Looking back now, I realise that memory doesn't really allow us to do that. It travels with us, quietly shaping how we see ourselves long before we realise it.

Writing Echoes of Tomorrow allowed me to explore these ideas more deeply than I ever could by simply recalling events. Fiction gave me permission to ask not only what happened, but how those experiences echo across a lifetime. It allowed me to explore how different members of the same family can carry completely different truths while loving one another just the same.

I don't think we ever stop rewriting our own memories because every new experience or event can change how we understand previous ones, and this is not because we are in any way dishonest.

Perhaps that is one of life's quiet gifts.

We cannot change the past, but we can continue to return to is with better understanding and compassion and discover new meanings within it.

Sometimes I still think about that little girl waiting in the town square for a bus, convinced that that person could change everything the moment they arrived. Perhaps that's what memory really is. Not simply looking backwards, but recognising the person we once were, with a little more kindness and compassion than we probably had at the time.

And perhaps, in doing so, we discover something new about ourselves and who we have become now. 

Frances Gallagher is an Irish novelist based in County Westmeath.