What is your earliest memory?

yes something about dappled light seems a bigtrigger.

Algis, I'se been missing your voice here, good to see you.

So, then, you had an early cemetary fix. I had a slight but definitive beginning with dogs (saw one in a field) and airplanes (well, we were connected to an airfield at the time) and food in the kitchen (I remember sliced cold turkey with salt, must have been four), and comfort, blankets and cushions of some sort around.
Also, ominously, a snowshovel in the guise of a fireplace shovel...which my mother let me use to begin to clear a path. Now I am aswarm with hoe and rake and shovel and so on, enough.

Yes. Plants, light & water ...

I remember the vending machine in the hospital waiting room when my brother was born. It had Peeps in it. I was 4 1/2.

I have a couple of other memories around that time. I also have some assumed memories from earlier, but I cannot be certain that the memories are real, because I see a particular tiny cottage that we lived in when I was two on a regular basis...

I have a few early memories - some I can date and others I can't.

In the summer of '58 (I was 2 years and a couple months old) we flew from Seattle to upstate New York, spent several weeks with relatives on the dairy farm, and then drove back. I only remember two things about the trip. On one of the legs of the flight to New York I clearly remember being absolutely terrified of flying, but kept quiet as a mouse. I remember thinking that if I made any noise something terrible would happen. Years later my mother told me what a good kid I was on the flight, but that I howled my head off as soon as we were back on the ground. Then, on the drive back to Washington I remember how hot and miserable the drive was across North Dakota (or maybe eastern Montana). The road was paralleling a river, and we stopped under a stand of cottonwood trees where some people had set up a watermelon stand. Was that ever good.

Maybe an earlier memory was sitting in a high chair at home. My sister (seven years my senior) walked by, and I grabbed a handfull of hair and pulled as hard as I could. She screamed to high heavens, and accused me of doing it deliberately (of course she was correct). Both of my parents said "oh no, it was an accident", and I remember thinking "how stupid can they be?". I don't remember how old I was, but it was before I could talk.

A final memory, also before I could talk. Our family was hiking in the mountains (Cascades?) above timberline. There was something about the food they brought along for me I didn't like, so I wouldn't eat it, no matter how hungry I got. Years later my mother said she figured out it must have been a funny smelling detergent she had used on the tupperware containers the food was in.

Is there any link between moving and memories? I find friends who lived in one place all their lives don't have the same early age memories - their first memories are when they are much older - maybe the earlier memories were just overlaid by later ones? things blurred into each other because they were in the same surroundings??? (now I'll hear loads of very early memories from people who always lived in one place! )

When you move to a new home/country as i did there is a definite fixing point that you can date things by and dramatic changes in your life and surroundings to make an impression.

That makes sense, Vivien..

I smiled at the reference to the razor strop being used as punishment. That was the theory at our house, if not the practice. If my grandmother were really infuriated, she would leave the punishment to my grandfather. (As an adult, i suspect she felt she might use too much physical force due to her anger--because she otherwise did not shrink from doling out spankings.) He would take the offender into the basement, after getting his razor strop, and then smartly flail a coal sack; to which the guilty party were expected to respond appropriately with a howl, to maintain the fiction. He would, all the while, calmly explain that he didn't think we were bad or stupid, but that we had done a bad or stupid thing. He'd point out all of the benefit which we all derived from my grandmother's efforts in the house, and how ungrateful and dull-witted it was to aggravate her to that degree. His disapproval (he was a very loving man) was sufficient disaster in a small child's life, that we would emerge from the basement in tears, the fiction of the punishment in tact. From this vantage, i'd say my grandmother was not fooled, but that the arrangement worked out well from both their points of view.

Good story, Setanta!
We all knew it was supposed to be razor "strop," (that's what my grandfather, "Pappy", always called it), but as kids we all thought that was a very strange word and couldn't bring ourselves to say it. So it became the "strap."

Just checked the dictionary and it is strop and not strap as I have written. It's a word I have never ever written and just guessed it was strap, sorry about that.

Not an issue, i hadn't meant to show anyone up.

Nah, we knew you weren't trying to show us up, Setanta.
We realize you're more educated than the rest of us.
It's okay. We've learned to cope.



(hugs)

I think so too Eva, Setanta really enjoyed writting that.

C'mon Setanta, be honest. :wink:

BBB and Dyslexia
What awful memories. My heart goes out to you both.

Tex-Star
Your memory is also sad.

My earliest memory is back when I was about 3. I have several memories from that age. Friends, the apartment we lived in, pictures on the wall, etc...

Setanta

What a delightful story!
Your grandfather sounded like a very kind, gentle & enlightened person.

i remember falling down the stairs when i was two. heck, i lost four teeth while i was at it and had to be taken to hospital. still dream that i'm falling down the stairs when i get sick.

When i was at school in Scotland 'the strap' or 'belt' was the method of punishment and control (I was 15 at the time). Girls were very rarely given it but i saw 15 year old lads sobbing after being strapped across their hands. I would imagine it was originally a razor strop because it was that size and shape rather than a belt.

As i was frequently in trouble I'm not sure how I escaped being one of those rare girls!

No, no, smokingunne...I meant it! Setanta really DOES know more than the rest of us! Have you read any of his essays on the history forum? He really should publish some of them. He has given many of us here a good education.

My earliest memory was when I was about four, lying in bed with (I think chicken pox) my mother had put brown paper around the lampshade, (for some reason) it was really gloomy, I was all alone in this really dismal bedroom.

That was half a century ago, the fact that I remember it so vividly means it must have been a very powerful event in my young life.

Your mother was dimming the light to protect your eyes, sweetie pie. Chicken pox, or maybe measles, brings on a sensitivity to light.