I know a man in his 60s who swears he can remember the day he was born. He describes the scene and the people there very convincingly. I was interviewing him about his mother for an article in the periodical of our local historical society. I must admit, he had a remarkable memory for names, places, dates and events. He remembered the names of all the kids in a school picture of all the children and teachers in the small local country school.
As for me, I have a selective memory. I have forgotten a lot of personal things involving difficult times with my immediate family, but I remember historical times quite well. I don’t remember being born, but I do remember lying in a crib with an uneasy feeling that I wasn't liked or wanted, and I wanted to go back to a nicer place. I was afraid of people, including my mother. Poor woman! At that time she was just realizing what a big mistake she had made at 17 years old in marrying my alcoholic, and very dictatorial father seven years her senior.
My first positive personal memories start with learning how to walk down a long flight of stairs in what Mother always called the Freeman House. It was a big and beautiful old house my mother always loved. It came with my father's job as manager of a large farm, owned by a rich man. I remember playing with pots and pans at her feet in the kitchen there, and I remember being scolded frequently for trying to climb an old windmill where a flowering vine, wisteria I think, grew. Once when I was about four years old, I had figured out how to shinny up the ropes of the swing, when Mother came running out all mad and scared to death for me, and made me come down before I had reached the top. Just think! I might have become a child circus aerialist! I loved to climb trees, and Mother would have had a heart attack if she knew how high I climbed up into the small branches of big trees to pick the bittersweet bouquets I gave her every autumn to put on display on the piano.
Later in life I completely forgot things, like picking up my plate of food and throwing in the face of my father when he was being verbally abusive in his own very talented sarcastic way. He did it every time we sat down at Mother's nice mahogany dining-room table to eat. I was in my late teens at the time. As I remember, he just laughed and he wiped off the food. He had succeeded in making me lose my cool, which was his intention. I completely forgot the incident until my Mother reminded me many years later.
I don’t recall much about the years of my first marriage or raising my children. I was not good at being a homemaker, wife, or mother, even though I always felt I was doing my best. I think I was actually a reader of books, and the rest of my life was secondary in importance to me. I wasn’t happy, so I just forgot everything I didn’t want to think about, and buried myself in a big historical novel. Weird, huh? I probably needed a shrink.
I wonder what are the earliest memories of other people. What are your earliest memories?
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Comments: 22
Other early memories is of my Dad's mother coming out from Kentucky to help my Mom when my brother's were born. I can remember going to the hospital and Mom being taken out to the hospital parking lot in a wheel chair with my new brother in her arms. I would have been around 4 years old then too.
When I was five years old I remember standing outside the apartment we lived in with a little friend of mine. A jet was going over really fast, and very low. It crashed not long after that. It scarred me - for years I would re-live that terror and cry every time I heard a plane or a jet flying over. I remember Dad taking us to look at the crash site a few days later...but I don't remember any more details. I have never flown because of that incident.
I can also remember my youngest brother and I spending a lot of time at my Aunt's because our middle brother was going deat and he was having convulsions - something he outgrew later and we never knew what caused it. There was a lot of secrecy and we weren't really told what was going on. I can remember the feelings of homesickness and missing my Mom & Dad, and getting in fights with my cousins all of the time, probably because I was homesick. I must have been in 4th or 5th grade. My baby brother remembers it to, and he must have been really young. He says he remembers looking up to me and the two of us being close during that time. Funny, I don't remember that at all, in our adult years we weren't close until recently, and I have a hard time remembering him being anything but a little brat when we were growing up who picked on me and would lie to get me in trouble for things that he did.
I also remember being about three and turning my tricycle about side down, turning the big wheel with the pedals, and singing "Popcorn man, popcorn man, I am the popcorn man". Who knows where I got that from.
with yourself. I, too, was a reader to cope.
I think memory can be a wonderful and/or devestating thing.
And I can only think of one good early one. I'll try
to do a little poem on it at a later date.
i remember my dad coming home, me running out to greet him, him opening the trunk of the car where there were bags of groceries, his handing me a bag of pastel-colored marshmallows...light green, pink, yellow, pale brown. my sister coming out and wanting some and me saying, 'no', my dad telling me i must share and my utter puzzlement at that! I thought they were all mine! I must have been about three.
I remember exploring in the 'jungle' beside our house when i was four, leading my sister through very tall grass and feeling like i was lost in the depths of africa. of course, the 'tall grass' was probably about 2 feet high and my mother could see us from the kitchen window. the adventurer/explorer was evident in me at an early age!
i remember inching past a barking great dane or boxer type dog to get to the neighbor's back door, where my mother had gone for a visit. I was three and afraid but I did it anyway!
K Anne - My kids watched Howdy Doody too, and radio program that had "The Teddy Bear's Picnic" as the theme song. Your mention of the 'jungle' reminded me when I was about 3 years old I was attacked by a mother guinea hen who was protecting her flock in a patch of golden rod flowers where I had wandered. She flew up on my head and pecked me hard. I was terrified.
Julie - Alcoholic fathers sure can be a bad factor affecting their children. I could never have any girlfriends over. One boy, Billie Treadwell, came to play with me sometimes. He had the same problem at his home. He grew up to be a great guy, and I probably would have married him if the war hadn come along and I joined the Navy Waves, and everything changed.
Elsie - I don't doubt your very early memories at all, because I have vague memories dating back to before I could walk. They aren't really memories of incidents, but of a general feeling of unease and of being in a wrong and dangerous place. r mother must have been a wonderful woman to ensure you a happy childhood, even though your father was hospitalized for most of it.
It might be that she described it so vividly to begin with that I can see it still.
It is a summer day. I am SOOOOOO proud of myself because I managed to dress myself. Clearly I am beyond the todler stage, I'm thinking 3 or 4. I have on a little sun dress that had buttons that had to be alligned and fastened, thus my well-deserved pride in accomplilshing this task. And I wore little white sandles that buckled (no socks). Here's the memory part. I'm in our driveway. It is not pavement but soft white sandy dirt. I squat down to play with the doodle bug holes in the dirt. Then I notice that I forgot to put on little panties.
Believe me, I'm not trying to be dirty or suggestive. This is the strongest part of the memory. I felt like such a failure and I was scared to death that I would be in trouble for omitting this important garment. I know I stood up to go back inside. And the memory ends.