Childhood Memories
As I watch Jocelyn rolling hither and fro, pivoting on her belly to reach this toy, stretching out her arms to grab the kitty’s tail, I ponder what her life will be like. What will she remember about her childhood? Though there are a few exceptions, it seems remembering things before age three or so is pretty rare. As she jabbers away, exercising her verbal muscle, growing by the minute, I can’t help wondering, when she grows up, what will be her earliest memory? This of course made me think of my earliest memory. There are two that I think must have happened around the same time, so I’m not sure which is the earliest. The first is really more like a snap-shot in time, I’m not quite three years old and I have a pair of cow-boy boots I love to wear, but they’re too small for my ever-growing feet. Undeterred, I wear them on a walk with my Dad. Of course they hurt my feet and soon I can’t walk, so my father lifts me up on his shoulders and carries me the rest of the way, I remember looking down at the top of his head my cow-boy boot clad feet dangling over his shoulders. This memory has a strong emotional component, whenever I think of it, I feel safe.
The second memory is in my bedroom at about the same time (at least I think it was). A neighbor girl who is a little older than me is playing with me in my room, and she finds a pair of safety scissors. She uses these scissors to cut my hair, practically scalping me, as she cuts in big chunks down to the roots. I remember my mother’s face, pure horror, when she finds us. Apparently I took the hair and hid it before we were found, stashing the evidence beneath my favorite blanket in an old stone crock which my mom didn’t find until some months later. I guess even then I knew I was in trouble. When I think of this memory, I can’t help but laugh, I know my mom was very upset when this happened, but now as an adult, it seems comical.
Since I know Jocelyn isn’t going to remember this part of her life, I’m busy trying to build memories for her. Taking lots of pictures, breaking out the video camera, just letting her be a baby. And I’ll keep remembering moments, like when she had her first solid food and the melodic sound of her sweet baby laugh.
Great post April. That’s why I started blogging – to have a concrete (well, you know) memory of these early years of Zach’s life. I don’t have many memories at all from childhood and those that I do are associated with family photos that we still have. So, I figure the more memories I keep now the more that will be available for Zach.
If you think I was horrified, you should have seen the other girl’s mother when she realized what her child had done to my child! Your bangs were chopped off by laying the scissors against your scalp and there was no method to salvage it and make it look like it wasn’t hair butchery!! Thankfully, that very morning you had had a picture taken at Penneys. I’d curled your soft hair into ringlets and they posed you with a lacy umbrella. Your hair was cut only a couple of hours later and your hair was still in ringlets when I found it later. That was the end of your shoulder-length hair. And the hair and treasured binkie were actually hidden in a blue enamel canner in the store room, which had a lid (explaining why it wasn’t found for months). The binkie was covered with cut hair.
With all that excitement, it’s no wonder you remember that day. The search for the binkie was traumatic and your distress was profound (and loud) when it wasn’t located. I think you were about three and a half years old.
The fact that I was told this story fairly frequently as a child probably also helped cement it in my memory. And that’s you, Grandma Miller, holding me up in my cowboy boots in the top picture, isn’t it? Now if I could only find that blanket again, somewhere in the move to Cali it has been misplaced, which makes me sad.