A friend did this on her blog and I thought it might help me therapize myself. So here goes:
[birth - 3 years old]
My earliest memory is of my mother: she'd taken us to Kroger's and the battery had died in the battleship of a station wagon she drove at the time. It's amusing now to imagine her tiny frame even attempting to command such a beast, but there we were, stranded at the grocery store, until a nice random gentleman (they still had those in the 70s) helped get us started. I was three years old.
I can remember my grandparents' house from this time vaguely; it was the only house around with a basement, and I can remember being scared to make my way down there, even though it was essentially a game room. I distinctly remember the pool table; never understood why my parents had left it when they'd sold the house, but it probably would have been a nightmare to move. I had only a short time with my grandfather, as lung cancer was starting to take a toll on him. He was the kindest soul I've ever known; I remember sitting on his lap a while he cried, saying he'd never get to see me grow up. I am the youngest of five (six actually, my mother's first child was born premature and died shortly after birth) and so I was "the caboose" as my dad put it. He was a lifelong railroad man, after all. Being the youngest in an older family comes with its own perks and drawbacks. Many of the faces of extended family I'd loved were from my grandparents generation, and as I grew I watched that huge, close knit extended family crumble and die off. The other vivid memory from this time was around Christmas. Mom had set up these elf figurines, about a foot tall or so, which plugged into the wall and would light up. I pulled one of the plugs halfway out and touched it, shocked the ever-loving shit out of myself. I can still recall the noise, like the humming you hear near power lines but a thousand times more pronounced and in my head. My mom lost it at the time, threw all the figurines away, before they could hurt her baby again.
I also remember sitting on the window sill in our kitchen and my ass went through the glass and broke it.
Some of my other memories from this time were from my aunt tina's house, where my cousin Neal and Katie and I would play incessantly while the adults did their thing in the den. I remember recording our antics on tape and i'd made them laugh by saying "crapola" into the mic. I can't recall if I got into trouble for that one but I distinctly remember it. I was probably about four.
