I did write about this before, but it's appropriate to this thread, I think. There are earlier memories, but they are more like sound-bites whereas this is my story-length memory:
When I was a baby, my father went out for cigarettes one day and just kept going. Didn't leave a forwarding address or anything.
My mother, with 3 children and no skills, became a welfare mom. She tried to find work, but the big problem was me ~ being a baby, infant then toddler and not in school like my older brothers, I put a real crimp on the job interviews. And her dating. So she called The Children's Aid Society and put me in foster care and a nice couple from another province picked me up one day.
They lived in a small town and I got to play with the little girl, Marie, across the road. Marie's grandfather had a dairy farm outside of the town, which she and I really enjoyed. Our favourite thing was to be allowed to clamber up on his big Clydesdales, Barney & Judd. Their backs were as broad as our beds, and we'd lay on them, staring up and cloud-busting. It was all pretty idyllic, especially for a kid from the inner city, until one day. We were playing hide-and-seek in the barn, and I chose to hide behind one of the cows. The cow let loose, as cows are wont to do. The adults came running at the sound of my screams, to find me glued to the spot under a steaming pile of fresh manure. The adults nearly pissed themselves laughing.
To this day I can still feel the moist warmth when I think about it.
Getting washed down under the well pump in the yard is not fun.
Manure smiling, manure smiling...the whole world smiles with you....
Great stories so far, folks.
I would also like to apologize for my typo on the thread title that I've just noticed.
How ombarrassung!
Diamonds in the sky
I wrote two versions of one of my favorite early childhood memories on May 15, 1995.
First draft:
DIAMONDS IN THE SKY
A curious child cradled her chin in the palm of her hand and gazed out the bedroom window of her family's home in the Albany flatlands.
She spent late afternoons entranced by the fiery copper reflection of the setting sun in the windows of homes perched on the steep Berkeley hillsides. The colors faded as the sun's last light dipped into San Francisco Bay.
Her favorite time was after ten at night, with only a sliver of moon piercing the star-studded blackness of the sky. She stared at the distant Berkeley hills long after a six year-old was supposed to be asleep in her bed, unable to separate the house lights from the stars dancing over the tops of the hills.
The headlights of cars twinkled brightly between the black Pine and Eucalyptus trees as drivers wound their way up the hillside streets. The diamonds turned into ruby taillights as the cars turned corners on the twisting roads.
She followed their headlights, never looking away, for fear she would lose them as they reached the hilltop and merged with the stars. Then she could go to sleep, sometimes leaning against her magic window.
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Second draft:
DIAMONDS IN THE SKY
A child's chin cupped in her hand, pondering, sundown's copper light glinting off windows of houses perched on the side of hills.
A child at a bedroom window watching ruby car taillights winding up steep, narrow roads to the top of the hills.
A child nodding sleepily, following car headlights twinkling through tree-studded vistas like diamonds, rising, merging into the stars.
I remember one middle of the night when I was not yet 8, waking up to a smoke-filled room I shared with four of my six sisters. We were all coughing and hacking and choking. When we could, we'd frog out a question, but mostly we were just choking. Suddenly, our 2nd floor bedroom window was smashed in. "Eeek", screamed one of us, "it's a burglar!" But of course it wasn't. It was a fireman... who carried us, one by one, out the window to the street. And on that street, we noticed the whole neighbourhood was out... watching our house burn to the ground.
Our breath smelled like ashes for weeks.
Interesting stories....
I have honestly tried to figure out what is my earliest childhood memory, and have to many to choose from, one keeps getting earlier than the last.....
One that stands out the most is being small enough to still sit in my grandfathers lap, all kicked back comfy and falling asleep on him. I couldn't have been but three or so.....we'd watch the evening news together, than the Beverly Hillbillies. If I could have lived with my Grandfather..I would have. He meant the world to me, and I still miss him to this day. He passed on when I was 12....somehow I managed to spend every summer with him till he died. As I got older, he'd sneak me to the corner store to buy him cigarettes. The funny thing about it was my Aunt owned another corner store exactly one block from his house, but he'd send me the one block to the other corner store in the opposite direction so she wouldn't know. Of course this earned me money to go and then keep my mouth shut afterwards...lol
The other story that sticks out in my mind is the time I spent the weekend with my father's parents, which was often.... They were totally opposite of my mother's parents...but good people. They kept their bedroom cold winter and summer. I loved sleeping in the roll away they kept in their room. Mamaw would push it up to the end of their bed so we'd be close to her. (my sister and I) She was very loving, and caring....very gentle natured. But one night, I got cold...and decided I would crawl into bed between my Grandmother and Grandfather, well....my knee touched her rear..and I thought she was naked. It grossed me out so badly, that I crawled with a great desperation back into the roll away. Looking back now, it was them old nylon granny panties. But just the thought of her being naked was more than my lil mind could accept......lol I was probably 3 or 4...
