Earliest Memory

What is the very first thing you can remember?

Falling out the car at around 2 - but maybe it's because I heard the story so often. It seems I remember the inside of the car and the car door but not hitting the ground.

How scary.  I remember going to bed in the garage.  We lived there while Dad was building us a house.

Climbing out of my crib after a nap when I was 2, walking into the living room and finding it empty - no furniture, only a bare floor and bare walls.  I started crying - loudly - and my parents rushed in from outside.  They were very annoyed with me.  "You knew we were moving," they said. I wasn't really clear about what "moving" meant.  I knew that my grandparents had moved out of the house across the street.  Afterwards, the house was empty and they were gone.  I had been in the empty house with my mom while she and the housekeeper were repainting it, and I knew that across the street was not far away.  I knew all that at a 2-year-old level, but my grandparents, to my mind, had just disappeared.  I didn't want to disapppear, too, or be the only one left behind.

I was not going to post this memory because it is such a trash memory.  I think I was 2.  My dad came home and took off his boots.  I said, in my two year old english, "Dada you feet stink.!"  He back handed me and I landed on the bed stead.  I can see that room as I write these words.  He was a mean, mean, mean man.  My cheek hit the the bed post.  
When I remember that, there was nothing I could do.  His mean self just was.  I lived there, my sisters lived there.  I consider that my mother could have done something.  All these years later, I still think so.  She is dead, now.  
Love, 
Betty

What a life.  I am so sorry. Your mother married a lousy man, but I am glad you are here.

Alice, I am sorry.  I should not have posted such trash.

It was not until school that I remember nice things.  A teacher is a powerful influence...a redemptive person for so many poor and unwanted kids.  God bless teachers.
Love,
Betty

You didn't post trash, Betty. You shared your reality. It was once a part of your life, and nothing to apologize for. It certainly wasn't anything you caused to happen. I was watching a special earlier on the president's and first lady's program on the assault of girls and women in its various forms and I thought of your post. I was reminded of how often society blames the victims, which is a terrible, terrible thing. 

I have such admiration for you, for coming through that darkness and spreading such light. And I also admire your courage in speaking out and sharing that reality. You and Alice, each in your own unique ways, are both women of courage and I am proud to know you both.  

Annie

Thank you,  Ann, for your kind words. but I have not  come through anything compared to you or Betty.   I was very lucky in love and for that I am most grateful.

Never apologize for your posts, Betty.  You simply state facts.  I wish you had better facts to state, but it was what it was.

I was referring to the courageous way you deal with your illness, Alice.

We are in this moment the sum total of all we have experienced, much of which we do not remember and some we wish to forget. We cannot rewrite the past for ourselves, but we can create in our words a different world. The human created by some magnificent force has the capacity to survive much and move forward. It's truly amazing.

My earliest memory is getting bit by the neighbor's poodle. I cried a lot and got a bi Flintstones band-aid from my mother.

I have an ongoing memoir project titled Saloon Piano Player. It's about my life as a working musician. This is an excerpt from the first chapter's draft.

My first memory foreshadows the rest of my life because it involves a piano. We had an upright piano, which, I suppose, didn't belong to us, because it didn't go with us when we moved away a year later. Or, maybe there wasn't room for it when we loaded our stuff. Or, maybe selling it provided cash to help pay for the move. Whatever became of it, my first home had a piano. It would be several moves and several years later before we had another.

In that earliest of memories, I climbed on the piano bench to play with the telephone that was on top of the piano along with framed photographs of family members. In those days, when you lifted the receiver, an operator in your town answered to ask whom you wished to call. Sometimes she was called “Operator,” and sometimes she was called “Central.” I suppose I just babbled into the phone when the operator came on the line. I remember her saying something like, “you children better stop playing with the telephone.” Today, whenever I see an old movie or newsreel in which telephone operators with headsets plug cables into panels of phone jacks and yank them out, I recall that day and wonder who the operator was and what became of her.

Pretty cool that our resident humorist has a funny first memory.  The story has a familiar ring to it.

I don't know if my son David, who also went through a musician phase when he was a young man, remembers this incident from when he was three, but his dad and I rremember it all too clearly.

We were out with friends, the three children at home with a sitter.  We had told the sitter we would be home around midnight.  Midnight was quickly approaching, and the festivities were still going strong.  we were at a club, "across the river," which meant we were in Louisiana - only about 15 miles from home; we lived just barely on the Texas side, but it meant that checking in with the sitter was a bit complicated.  We only had a pay phone available, and were short on quarters, so we called collect and asked for Laurie (our sitter).  Only Laurie did not answer the phone; David did.  David was three.

"Hello!"  he shouted.  The operator asked, "Is this Laurie?"  "Nooo," came the response, "This s Daa-vud!"  "Operator," we asked. "Counld you please tell David to get Laurie to the phone?"  The operator was pretty cool; she clearly got what was happening, so she tried, but kept getting the response, "This isn't Laurie; this is Daa-vud."  We had to give up and go straight home.  Once there, we rang the back doorbell.  After a minute, David appeared at the back door with a broom, which wavered and wobbled in his three-year-old hands for a bit before he was able to successfully knock the security latch, which we had placed near the top of the door so that it would be out of his reach, out of place and open the door.  We found Laurie soundly sleeping on the living room sofa.

Needless to say, it was the last time we used her as a nighttime sitter.  

Enjoying your memories.

I don't remember anything until about the age of nine except that car fall. Nothing. I have a slew of 9 year old memories. I was especially fond of my uncle's crank tin type player on rollers with the pretty gold-colored rolls with the holes in them.

My earliest memory was crawling into the chicken yard and sampling the droppings.  My mother was agast and washed my mouth out.  I was two or three years old. I don't think one can forget an event like that.  I don't remember the taste of chicken shit nor do I want to. Yuk.

Isn't it odd.  None of us recall a happy occasion.   I wonder why.

I was thinking that very thing, Alice.  Childhood is a traumatic experience no matter if you live in the best and most loving family ever.  I think.
Love,
Betty

I remember reading in a psyhology book - don't remember which school for sure, but it may have been one of the TA (tranactional analysis) books, that the question, "What is the earliest thing you remember?" is a good question to ask a new client because so often it is remembered because it is the memory of a defining moment in our childhood experiences.  For instance, it might possibly have been such a moment in Betty's childhood because what happened to her was so clearly undeserved and unfair.  It is possible that she learned at that moment that here parents were wrong, and should not be considered role models. Being able to get that at an early age could have made her more open to finding whatever positive role models appeared in her life - like her school teachers.

Of course, I am not a psychologist, just a fascinated student, so I could very well be wrong,

Anne, I think you are right.  From that moment, I knew I was on my own.  That may sound wrong, but, I think I did know from that moment, maybe before that, that I was just a me.  
I was a lone child.  Even with all the siblings.  My lone-ness was my choice.  I never felt a sadness about the lone-ness.  I just was as I just am this day.  
Amazing how it takes 70 years to understand yourself. 
Love,
Betty

Anne, I think you are right.  From that moment, I knew I was on my own.  That may sound wrong, but, I think I did know from that moment, maybe before that, that I was just a me.  
I was a lone child.  Even with all the siblings.  My lone-ness was my choice.  I never felt a sadness about the lone-ness.  I just was as I just am this day.  
Amazing how it takes 70 years to understand yourself. 
Love,
Betty

My son always says he had a terrible childhood - and it was not terrible! We had a lot of fun and he behaved like a happy child. So, I think there is something to remembering unhappy moments of childhood if asked about earliest memories. To get a happy memory one has to ask for one.

" To get a happy memory one has to ask for one."

I think you're right, DK.

What is you first happy memory?