What’s your first memory?
BUMPED UP just for fun.
[NOTE: I came across this old post of mine today, and thought it might be fun to repeat it.]
I’ve always had an excellent recollection for early events in my life, with the peculiarity that my memories tend to be visual as well as auditory and emotional. That is, not only can I remember a great many incidents occurring at a very young age—what happened, what was said, how I felt—but there’s also a sort of theatrical scene-setting. I can often recall where I was standing in relation to the other players—and, more oddly, what everyone was wearing at the time.
It took me a while to learn that most people don’t remember things that way. I would be reminiscing with a friend and would say, “Don’t you remember? You were standing over there, and you were wearing that black and white suit with the red silk blouse,” and the friend would gaze at me in puzzlement, wondering what I was talking about.
Of course, no independent corroboration exists to tell me whether I’m right or wrong. So perhaps I’m full of it; there’s no way to know for sure.
I once participated in a study of first memories. The researcher’s premise was that our earliest memories are not random and that, in particular, a person’s very first memory has some significance and is a sort of theme.
I have no idea what the results of that research were, or whether the concept is true, but I find it fascinating.
As for my first memory—well, first I’ll offer the following, from commenter sergey, posted quite some time ago:
Tolstoy also writes in his authobiographical notes on his rememberance of how he was born—not only all the environment of the room, but also his sensations of the delivery itself. My own first rememberance does not runs so close to the begining, but I do remember very clear how I was weighted after being brought from the clinic to the flat of our family doctor. It was cold being sripped of swaddling bands and put on scales platform, white and cold metal trough, and I was frightened when it begin to rock to and fro under me.
Why am I posting sergey’s first memory? Because it is virtually the same as mine. Although I think mine occurred when I was older, perhaps at ten months or so, I was very surprised indeed when I read his comment. It’s the first memory of another person, one who lives halfway across the world, and yet it represents a fairly accurate rendition of my own first memory.
If so, why this first memory rather than another? The theme in my early life that I think it represents is the idea “you’re on your own, kid”—at least, in the emotional sense.
That may have been my first memory; it’s pre-verbal. There are no words because I didn’t have them yet. But my first memory that involves thinking—and it’s a pretty big thought, actually—took place in the bathroom when I was about two. I was sitting on the john, probably being toilet-trained, and my mother was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, waiting for me. It suddenly struck me that we were two different people, a thought both scary and fascinating, perhaps even exhilarating.
I remarked to her in awe: “You’re you and I’m me.” Come to think of it, it’s another extension of that same theme mentioned above: “you’re on your own, kid.”
Feel free to offer your own first memories in the comments section.
Wow! My first memory is when I was three. Before that… nada!
Age 4 and a half; I was stung on the foot by a bee on the day we were moving to a new house. I remember the sting, my mom putting some salve or something on my foot, and the squishy feeling when i put my PF Flyers back on.
Gee, and I thought I was unique! First memory was of me about 10 days old. Born bio-male, I SCREAMED as my Mom removed the dressing from my circumcision. I was able to describe to my Mom the entire room and all the furniture. We didn’t know until I was …35 or so when I described it to my Mom (thinking it was when I was 5 and had a hydroseal that required something similar) and she said…nope back further.
I remember several events when I was 3, more when I was 4 and pretty much a LOT from 5 on. I have the best memory of anyone in the family and can be fairly detailed.
Our memories are ‘cross referenced’ with other events in our lives (why a particular smell or sound provokes a memory) and the more detailed our memory is of experiences the greater the number of ‘contact references’ we will get to past events. It is amazing to be able to recall so much of our past. My brother says he doesn’t remember pretty much anything before going into the military at 18….
My first memory is from when I was 4 or so. I was talking with a friend- whom I still keep in touch with- on the phone. I was amazed that I could talk to her and not see her. In addition, the phone was not in the room where it was during the rest of my childhood.
My parents told me that when I was 3, I got into a car of visiting friends and turned on EVERYTHING, which created a racket. But that is what I was told I did, not what I remember I did. I am not denying that I did it, just that I don’t remember doing it.
Many times I have seen slides or photos of when I was 2 or 3, but they evoke no memory.
I have the reputation of having the best memory of what went on during our elementary and high school years. Though an elementary school friend has, I believe, an even better memory- judging from what she has told me.
For me it was when I was about 4 and the house next to ours burned down in the middle of the night. Amazing how clearly I remember looking out my bedroom window as it burned until the fire department made us leave the house.
Been told about others so many times I have a hard time telling if I remember the actual event or just being told about it.
But that fire to a 4 year old was something and thankfully the elderly couple were unharmed even if they did complain about me playing basketball in our driveway my entire childhood.
Tracy Coyle:
I have been teased for my reports of early memories; it certainly is kind of odd to remember stuff from when you were pre-verbal, I’ll admit. It also (in my case) is pretty funny that I can usually say what I was wearing, even if I was a tiny toddler at the time. One would think I’d grow up to have a career in fashion, or at least to be a real fashion plate! But although I do try to dress pretty well, I won’t be receiving any prizes on that score. In my case, I think that remembering what people were wearing is some sort of “snapshot” type of visual memory. However, I also tend to remember what I was wearing, too, and I certainly wasn’t looking at myself.
It’s become a kind of family joke. “So, what were you wearing, Jean?”
I will add that my grandmother once said she had the same kind of memory for what people wore.
Standing in my crib gripping the rail while watching the Army-McCarthy hearings with my mom. Course, I’d no idea that’s what it was but mom sussed it out from a description many years later. She wasn’t generally a big tv watcher, it seems.
I was going to ask how you could imagine otherwise. How could you image an an exact identity between yourself and your mother? But I don’t really think that the literal meaning of the words you used was what you meant. What you probably suddenly realized was that you were in some sense separately responsible for what you did, and that you were subject to the expectations of others. It is a kind of separateness and being on your own, certainly.
One of the problems with being the youngest of a large family is my siblings have LOTS of stories about me as a little kid. And it’s not just siblings. When I was born I had two brothers already in the military and a sister that was a senior in high school. Well lil’ me was very popular with her and her friends so now I have a bunch women in their 60s that have all kinds of memories about me that I have no recollection of at all but have heard so many times it’s hard to know there accuracy.
And I on the other hand have no embarrassing stories of them only memories of how I thought they were so cool and loved their albums so much.
Sad.
I was one year old, and I was taken to visit my mother’s parents in the house where my mother grew up. It was the only time I was there; my grandmother died not long after, and my grandfather came to visit us until he passed away, rather than our family going there. I described the house perfectly several years later; my mother was astounded to think I could remember seeing it.
My first memory that I can definitively tie to an actual date, is the day my father and I picked up my mother and my oldest sister at the hospital a couple of days after the birth- this would have been when I was 3 years and 16 days old. I also clearly remember watching the 1st moon landing, an event that took place two days later.
Now, I also have a clear memory of my mother and I walking the streets of Cicero, Illinois to visit my great aunt. This might or might not have taken place prior to my sister’s birth, but it couldn’t have occurred much afterwards since we left Chicago area in the Fall of 1969.
I have no memories earlier than that, though. It was basically after about the age of 4 that I have more connected memories- in other words, instead of the two memories I have from age 3-4, the ones I have from age 4-5 number in the hundreds.
Most of these tend to be traumatic or embarrassing. Mine is of my tonsillectomy at age 3. The anesthesiologist was going to use ether and I snatched the ether cup off and threw it on the floor. Then I remember waking up and not being able to say anything and hearing my mother talking to the doctor.
Likewise. Probably a common age, and circumstance.
Maybe not the earliest, but: Walking back and forth down an intermittently shady, and flower lined sidewalk on a sunny day; probably July 7th – probably in late morning – outside the large clinic/small hospital where my brother had been born the evening before – escorted by my grandmother (mother’s mother) and an older female cousin (who I can in retrospect identify). Would have been 2 yrs 6 mos. Then, my Dad appearing to take me to a wing of the building and lift me up to try and wave to my mother through one of those modern, rectangular, five foot above ground level, “clerestory” style windows you might be familiar with from late 40’s through 1960’s school architecture. Glimpsed her briefly and she waved, then I moved my head or something and lost her, seeing just reflections.
A couple decades later as I was finishing college, I stumbled onto the fact (how I had missed all that time it I don’t know) that the hospital which still looked kind of like an elementary school, was just across from the extreme southern boundary of the campus I was attending.
It didn’t look much like I remembered though. Gone were the borders of flowers and the elms [I assume] lining the lawn-like verge of the street, the traffic was incessant, the area on the way down physically.
No mild dappled sunlight, no garden-like urban oasis … just aging brick and pavement; and increasingly shabby large brick houses converted into flats and frat houses.
I can remember a few events from when I was 2 or 3, but very little.
That said, a lot of people remember things that did not happen. My sisters and I have very different memories of the same events in some cases. (I am the eldest by about 3 years.)
For example, once afternoon we’d been at a friend’s house and these rotten crabapples or something were abundant and of course we threw them at each other. The friend’s little brother was very young and he called the squishy crabapples “slobber” which we thought very funny.
At dinner that night we were served something none of us like, and #2 younger sister yelled “I’m not gonna eat this slobber!” which in our family was astonishing and unprecedented disrespect.
#1 younger sister, though, remembers all four grandparents being there to witness this outburst and its punishment. However, I know for a fact that never were all four grandparents assembled in the same place.
#1 sister likes to embellish stories and I think incorporate them into her memory. That’s not the only occasion. Furthermore, the three of them have retold stories to one another, changing them from time to time, which influences how they remember. Since I was oldest, and didn’t often participate in these retellings, we occasionally have significant discrepancies in what we remember.
So, you had reactant personality even then. LOL
http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/manuscripts/iyer.koleva.submitted.understanding-libertarian-morality.pub610.pdf
I was 2+, it was summer, and I was playing by myself in the farm yard. The chickens were let out after egg laying, and the rooster fixated on me. He started chasing me and leaping into the air trying to spur me. I was fleeing and screaming in fear, how long this went on was probably less than 20 seconds but it seemed like a long time. Then I heard the back porch screen door slam and mom coming out running with a butcher knife in her hand. She grabbed the rooster, took it to the chopping block and chopped off it’s head, said “We’ll have him for supper.”
Ever since then, chicken and dumplings has been one of my favorite meals. Mom, my first and only heroine.
Huh … Yes. I had an aunt who didn’t seem to let minor and pedestrian details get in the way of a dramatic retelling.
I have also noticed that certain people seem quite anxious to use publicly recounted, but noticeably shaded or even shaped family memories, in order to establish a “framing”: which will then function to condition or channel all further consideration or contextualization of the events or persons involved.
Direct contradiction if you know better, and done politely if possible, is the only solution, unless you’re content to allow yourself to be herded along the path of falsehood for the sake of fellow-feeling.
DNW:
You wrote:
Actually, I meant exactly what I said:
What I’m attempting to describe there is not the replacement of some consciously perceived image of unity with an image of separateness. I’m describing the dawn of the consciousness of separateness. This was very very very early in life. Probably before I was two years old. Prior to that there were flashes of memory, but very little self-consciousness, in both senses of the word, particular in its meaning “consciousness of having a separate self.”
I suddenly understand that we were separate. It’s not that I’d thought much about either concept (togetherness vs. separateness) prior to that moment. It’s that I now had the concept.
The development of the concept of self is complex. One is apparently not born with it.
This was not connected with any idea of responsibility or the expectations of others. It felt purely existential and philosophical. If you don’t think little children can have such thoughts and feelings, I disagree. I certainly remember having had the thought on that level, although I could not have possibly articulated it that way at the time.
My favorite story is Parker’s experience with the rooster. From what I have read of these memories, it appears that an event that is out of the ordinary is more likely to be remembered.
Ok. Apparently I misunderstood that what you had “merely” meant, was that you had come to a consciousness of yourself as a … distinct and self-aware self.
This at least would make sense; as opposed to your somehow grasping that you and your mother were not, as you theretofore mistakenly imagined (which you say you didn’t so imagine), were previously one person.
I can, almost, imagine a well cared for child with no real sense of self … floating as it might be, in a bubble of care and protectedness, not yet at an age to set itself in opposition to the will of its parents, not with much of a will of its own at all – so new to the world and undeveloped it is. How could it even know what it wants, apart from experiencing certain urges that have not even been clearly formulated of conceptualized?
And if what you are trying to express is not captured or at least glanced alongside there somewhere, then I will give up for now, and just listen in case someone else can explain it.
I posted several early memories on the first version of this post, starting in my second year. After that post, I looked up my parents’ graduate school apartment on Google Street View, and there it still is, almost exactly as I remember it, the crossing barrier where my dad used to wave goodbye while I watched from the window, little chain-link fenced playground where that bratty kid did some rude thing to me, the narrow street lined with front stone steps where the mothers and kids hung out in those long gone days when dads went off to work and school and moms didn’t. But the main thing I wonder about is, why do some people have early memories while others don’t? Most people I know don’t remember anything before kindergarten or so. I could write you a book of everything I remember before that, and so could all of my siblings. We talk it over and match things up and largely agree, though my parents are gone now and can’t confirm things for us anymore. I could draw a roughly accurate map of the room layout and general neighborhood of everyplace we lived, houses, apartments, shared homes with grandparents, starting when I was one or so. But meanwhile, a dear friend whose family moved to another country when she was seven remembers nothing at all before the move, while her memories start up like a continuous movie from the moment of the move. How come?
I can recall playing in a kiddie pool in my grandparents backyard when I was about 18 months but as this event also exists on a home movie I wonder if I am not just recalling a later viewing of that film.
Apparently, age 4 months and a few days: I remember looking out our second floor window and seeing snow. Very distinct memory. It came up when I was 8, and there was (again) snow in our San Francisco Bay Area town. I asked my parents when it had last snowed in our town. They said – which we later confirmed with the local newspaper – that the last time it had snowed was the year I was born. I was somewhat nonplussed, because I didn’t think my memories went back anything like that far. My more continuous memories started a couple of years later at 2–1/2 or so.
I do not recall ever thinking I was anything other than a separate person.
I told my stories on the original link, but it is interesting to see how many people have experienced the “memory at one remove” — I have a couple of those episodes myself.
My little brother doesn’t remember anything happening the way my older sister and I do, so I wonder which of us actually has told something the way it happened (probably some combination of part right and part wrong for each of us).
The ability of most people to mis-remember things, sometimes very badly, is what makes trials so suspenseful.
I was two years old when I was lying on an X-ray table and looked up to see a nurse passing the door to the room and calling out for my mother. I was one of the few civilians to have access to penicillin in 1944 because it was almost entirely reserved for the troops.
Later in my life my mother told me that one of my lungs had collapsed when needles were inserted from my back to drain the fluid filling it.
Happy Mothers’ Day 75 years later.
I have a memory of a memory. When I was very young I could remember a sense of becoming conscience for the first time. As a young child I believed that was birth. Like remembering when the “light” was turned on inside my head. At 49 I can no longer clearly recall that memory, only the memory of having that memory as a child.
I am in my playpen on the front lawn of the multi-family house I lived in from aged 6 months to 13 years old. I am ca. 2 years old, and I notice the woman who lived on the other side of my family, Marie B., looking at me from her living room window.
Every time I would get sick, I’d have the sensation of being crushed. My brother had the same illusion. When I had surgery with anesthesia as an adult it evoked the same bizarre feeling. Someone suggested it was a birth memory, and in fact, my mother was heavily anesthetized giving birth to both me and my brother. So, maybe.
Besides that though, first memory I was about one years old, babysitter asked me if I wanted to be a stewardess and her house had a scary cuckoo cuckoo clock, tick, tick TICK!
First best memory was about 2 years old, doing arts and crafts with mom. Then the phone rang, yak yak yak, so I figured out how tape worked myself, omg! Needless to say, I covered everything with tape.
I remember sitting on the couch with the BadgerMom, and something really, really bad had just happened. Mom and I figured it was Kennedy. Either the day it happened, or the funeral.
No older than three. At a family gathering in my grandparent’s dining room. I think everybody was there (all seven children and their children. I’m third youngest of the cousins, and the youngest wasn’t around yet). That’s the only memory I have of my grandfather, who died when I was three.
I have one memory from about 2 years old, playing on the floor of the rental cottage that my parents lived in when Dad came back from Korea. Then I have a handful of memories from the period after that, living in the GI-Bill married student housing at UC-Santa Barbara. I burned my hand on the stove, trying to help Mom take something hot out of the oven, my grandmother visiting, wearing a light brown dress with white polka-dots, my little brother sleeping in an English-style pram, because it was all the bed that Mom and Dad had for him at first, the sandbox in our back yard being so popular with all the other little kids that I couldn’t play in it myself. I have quite a few memories from the age of three on. OTO, my daughter says that she can’t recall much from earlier than about 4.
Neo and DNW and the concept of the origination of a separate self: check out Jacques Lacan. He made his reputation with what’s called “The mirror stage” when first we each see (in a mirror) that we are a whole, separate self. Jung and his great student Newman also speak of this sea change: at first we are still “in” mother-all-womb-collective. So, too, the tribal peoples of the world who, relatively speaking, exist in one mother-womb-god-collective. That is “the feminine”, the primordial “god”, mother. It takes a while to flip into “the masculine” of “oh, I can totally do things on my own” and I carry, with that, this thing that will be called “responsibility.”
These two stages, seen in the development of each individual, each culture, can be used to distinguish between today’s “left” and “right.” The world awaits a “whole-ing” of these two fundamental points of view – but are we mature enough to embrace that?
Don’t know the age but I think probably 3 or 4. A vivid scene of my father and uncle and another man haying in the field below the big McIntosh tree near the house. Horses pulling the wagon with the hay loader behind. My uncle driving the team and my father and the other man stacking on the wagon. After that, little or nothing until I was in school.
I recall learning to walk – my father was supporting me and I wanted to walk (cruise?) over between the coffee table and the couch so I could support myself with my hands. How old is that? Also, my early memories seem to be awfully dark – just seems like a lot of my early life was lit by 15-watt bulbs. Anybody else have that feeling?
My early memories are mostly indistinct. I’ve never really tried to order them in time. I have one very strong painful early memory; it still hurts, so I’m only going to sketch it, but something bad happened and my dad got extremely upset, and I think this was the first time I realized that could happen to a grown-up.
Before that, I remember trying to teach myself to write my name — I was about 5, and you could get your own library card once you could write your name, which I was desperate to do. It seemed so impossible! I remember watching the top of my mom’s pencil when she wrote, then trying to do the same thing. (Yeah, that didn’t work…)
The earliest memory I can think of is playing by myself in my sandbox. I must have been about 2. The people next door to us had a friendly sheep who kept me company — he would sit right next to the wire fence, on his side of it, and my sandbox was right next to the fence on my side. I remember the companionable silence of that, and I remember reaching my hand through the wire fence to feel the sheep’s wool.
First real memory was a jailbreak. My neighbors were having a BBQ party and although invited, it was past my bedtime and parents said no. I got put to bed, and then i put my plan in action. I snuck out the glass sliding door and walked around to the party in my red nightgown with white loop designs. Some adult ratted me out before too long. I remember being worried that the sound of my plastic pants over my diaper would give me away (they were so loud and crinkly!). I was potty trained by two, and if it was summer then i was about 18 mos.
I remember going for a walk with my parents past some honeysuckle, and my mom letting me taste the little drop of nectar in a flower. I don’t remember a stroller or baby carriage, and I don’t explicitly remember whether both parents were there or just my mom, but I do remember it was in South Carolina. That makes me as young as 16 months if both parents were there (because my sister was born when I was 16 months old and my parents had no money for babysitters) and a little more than 3 years if only 1 parent was there (because we moved from South Carolina when I was that age, and my dad could have been home with my sister and/or brother).
My next earliest for-sure memory was of playing with a little boy, Jacque, from across the street in a little grove of trees next-ish to my house, and specifically when he whipped it out to pee in a little hollow formed by the roots of the biggest tree. I was utterly fascinated and wanted to know why I didn’t have that useful attachment. Also South Carolina, but I think maybe closer to 3yo because I was playing unsupervised, which suggests my mom was up to her elbows in diapers.
And I remember asking my parents if a grill stayed hot after you took the food off, seeing the alarm on their faces when they said YES! So don’t touch it! and then going outside while they were washing dishes and planting my hand on the dull silver metal of the Weber’s lid, screaming and running back inside. Also South Carolina, and I’m almost sure I remember a high chair (but only one) at the table, which means I was between about 21 months and 3 years.
Finally, I remember standing on my bed in the middle of the night, terrified that the wrinkles in my bedspread were snakes, gathering my courage to jump off the bed and run to the house’s main room, and climbing onto the table. My dad’s voice from the master bedroom, weary: “Jamie, go back to bed.” Me, sniveling with fear, climbing back down and creeping back into my room, turning on the light (which I wasn’t allowed to do in the night), confirming that they were only wrinkles, taking a deep breath and turning the light back off. At which point the wrinkles reverted to being snakes. It was a long night… I’m figuring maybe my sister had been born but was in a crib in my parents’ room, so same age range as the grill story.
All other early memories of mine could have been recountings or pictures in scrapbooks, as far as I can tell.
I wonder what kind of childhood memories children brought up from the earliest age on electronic games and distractions will have. They don’t even seem to go outside unsupervised. What world are they engaging?
My neighbors, and I live on a street which retains some traces of a rural atmosphere, deliberately purchased their house because of the largish lots – about two acres. They also decided having been raised as the only children of only children, to have as many kids as came along, and the wife, a nurse, is homeschooling them. The husband is an AF Reserve captain, but usually home at night; and when not on a tour of duty overseas drives to the base daily.
The kids are playing outside all the time. When I drive up to my house, a couple will inevitably scoot across their yard to my drive, and shout “Hi Mr. D… !” and start talking. I try to humor them for a few moments, though in truth I can hardly make sense of their breathless recitations.
What shocks me when I think about it, is that these are the only kids I have met in years that seem to be what I would call, “normal”. They are not sullen. They are open. They are cheerful. They are active. They cannot wait to tell you about the deer that crossed the yard, or the shoes that their grandparents bought them for their birthday.
Even the best adjusted of other children seem to spend most of their time working their thumbs across a small hand held computer.
It’s a bloody crime.
So many cool memories – I have so few! At 3.5 yo, I was inside in Chicago looking outside at my Dad making a snowman. There was a car nearby in the driveway, the snowman in the front yard.
My other Chicago memory is of running down a big hill of grass at a picnic / party in the summer, probably when I turned 4, just before leaving for CA.
I also remember playing with Silly Putty on the big plane with Grandma and my older sister on the way to CA, while my parents took a car with furniture.
My Uncle Ken (now over 90) took some home movies, but only recently did I see them (10 years ago) — didn’t remember any of the scenes. Was fun to see young parents, Aunts and Uncles, and baby cousins.
I had an unhappy childhood which I’ve practiced not remembering (messy divorce and custody battle), tho my sisters remembered more. I was much better at remembering world history than family history.
Now I wish I had more memories of my young years.
My earliest memory dates from when I was about 15 months old; I tumbled backward out a screen door, and down a concrete step into a garage. My mother did not remember this event at all, but I later described the surroundings in such detail she realized that it happened at my aunt’s house.
They don’t even seem to go outside unsupervised. What world are they engaging?
Good point. My younger son has his kids in sports all the time. Probably good memories. My older son has the opposite politics and his kids watch TV all day.
My earliest memory, eh? Probably a few weeks old? Certainly pre-verbal.
I remember the glowing colors of the things hanging in the air suspended. And the radiant colors of something (people) entering? from ?someplace (I realized it was “the door” later lol), and the sounds that came from the moving colors (that I realized was “voices” later). And a “knowing” (if you will) that one of the sounds was “safe” and “loving” and that its color was already familiar and welcome.
It’s a memory of the original memory at this point.
…I was an odd child. I remember telling myself to “not forget” many, many times from my toddler stage onward. And going over past memories… recalling details. I know I didn’t want to forget that memory in particular.
I have several memories that are pre-verbal. (Oddly perhaps, I have some memories of conversations and knowing what they meant, without knowing how to speak myself.)
In particular I recall crawling under the coffee table and seeing legs in nylons (it was Gramma Kiel and Mom, and “Aunt” Jo’ (Gramma Kiel’s daughter). And I remember someone saying “how cute” and laughing about it, and being scooped up off the floor into someone’s warm and comfy lap. I’d guess I was, what, 6-9 months old?
I also remember the mild trauma of my first birthday (I didn’t know that’s what it was… but at this point I can put a date on it: Jan 17, 1953). Poppa called me over (I think I could walk at that point), and lifted me up and gave me a swat. I was bewildered… I knew I hadn’t done anything “wrong” (so I had some superficial understanding of what acting bad meant lol) … and started crying. I clearly recall Mom saying “Oh Doyle, he doesn’t understand” and scooping me up, and saying “It’s okay honey. It’s your birthday. Don’t cry. It what happens on your birthday. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.” Which comforted me (I understood enough to know what she was saying: this was enough to turn the crying to sniffles).
Hmm. Thinking about it: this single thing, always remembered, I wonder if it may have been what put a barrier to trust in place between me and my father that never really dissipated. Odd, that.
brdavis9:
Wow, those are some really early memories.
As far as your wondering whether that single incident “may have been what put a barrier to trust in place between me and my father that never really dissipated,” my guess is the following.
It may have started it, and it may have been remembered because it was reinforced by other incidents that fed into it. I doubt a single isolated incident, not followed by any subsequent incident that gave you similar feelings, would have done it. If may have started a feeling tone that was reinforced by other incidents that gave you the same feeling tone.
Well, it was a “purposely remembered memory” if you will, neo. And analyzing it on the personal level as part of Pop’s and mine often strained relationship only just occurred to me while writing it.
(I have a ton of stories of Pops lol. I liked and admired – and respected – my father: but it was like we were from different planets lol. Our perspectives seldom ever jived – let alone our politics – and we argued to the last. Still, we got along as best we could, and he was never purposely unkind… and certainly never like some of the horror stories some of the people I’ve met told tales of. In that regards, I was born fortunate. He wasn’t mean in the least, and for a poor man, was almost always generous to others even less fortunate. The person I remember was not the same person my youngest brother recalls though.)
The “instruction” I often gave myself over the years to “never forget, to remember” was not specific to that particular memory.
brdavis9:
Did you ever read Nabokov’s Speak, Memory? If not, I suggest you do. An excerpt:
I have fragments of memories earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBIC8JTQMMQ
“He Man Woman Hater’s Club”
My first complete memory is me car pooling with the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. And I couldn’t help myself. My Mom is laughing at me. She’s laughing at me. I’m five years old. What do I know what I’m doing? All I know is she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.
This was before the #MeToo thingy. She didn’t try to stop me. Had she tried to stop me, I would have stopped even back then.
Because the thing that made me happy was she enjoyed it.
So she’s giggling. And I’m trying to figure out how I am going to explain to my guy friends that I still love dinosaurs.
No I haven’t. I just added it to my Kindle though. Thanks!
brdavis9:
I just found a couple of the excerpts from the book that I was looking for earlier and couldn’t find.
And in particular he wrote this about his mother telling him to remember something:
I was 2 and a few months, on a plane with my family to Beirut, Lebanon. In those days, those old prop planes had sleepers. I was sharing a bed with my older sister. She had her feet in my face. I was very annoyed. Of course, I had my feet in her face too and retaliated. The memory is vivid.
I have a vague memory that was a little earlier. We stopped in Minnesota on the way to Beirut in order to visit relatives. (I was born in Guatemala. My parents had been outside the U.S. for four years and now had three children.) I was presented to my grandfather, my dad’s dad, kind of a solemn occasion. I just remember my grandfather’s huge hands, his lap, and his knees. Unfortunately, he died while we were in Lebanon so those are the only memories I have of him.
I believe since these memories are of my subjective state they must be valid. I have others that I suspect were planted by repeated storytelling by my parents.
First memory is of a horse rearing above me and my mother scrambling under the fence to pull me back. The joys of being a grandson of a rancher in New Mexico.