Someday We’ll Laugh About This…Right?

What is your earliest memory?
I asked my father-in-law this question, and he promptly replied, “When I got to kindergarten and I realized they weren’t going to let me do whatever I wanted so I left and walked home. The janitor caught me and brought me back.” (He was the very catered-to youngest of 13. Reality was shocking to his 5-year-old self.)
Years ago, my grandma told me her earliest memory was very similar. She remembered graham crackers and milk in kindergarten and needing to use the bathroom but not wanting to go at school. Instead she walked home – across several blocks in 1920s San Francisco – to show up on her front porch. Surprise.
My earliest memory was the Easter I was two. My birthday is at the end of January, so I was a very young two, but the memory is very clear. I had a dyed Easter egg in my hand and there was a crack in the shell. Some of the dye had seeped through, staining the egg white. I remember looking up at my dad, and him nodding that it was okay. I also remember that the Easter bunny had left coloring books and crayons on top of the rabbit hutches in the backyard. (I know this is a memory, and not a story I was told, because the thing that sticks out in my memory is the pyramid of rabbit pellets under the cages.)
During that time we lived on Wright Street in Santa Rosa, just around the corner from Franklin Park. I vividly remember being in one of those woven bucket swings and being pushed. There was a point where I got too high and my stomach dropped. I remember the sensation of losing strength in my limbs, and going limp. I remember preferring the regular swings, but on my stomach, and the swing set with the metal horses that you “rode” by swinging back and forth.
Apparently our neighbors across the street watched me occasionally, and I remember they had cans of shoestring potatoes, which was very exotic to my 2-year-old self. They also had mercurochrome in a little vial in the medicine cabinet, and they put it on a scrape on my knee. For some reason, I also remember they had pull-down, roll-up shades that had a tear; the cellophane tape they’d used to repair it had yellowed and was brittle. (This babysitting session may have been when my brother was born, but that seems to have escaped being recorded.)
I also remember watching a line of ants, and tasting one. (It was peppery.) I remember lining up magnetic letters on the Fisher Price desk to spell the word milk and realizing that the letters actually meant milk. I remember having calamine lotion put on my body as I stood on a heater grate – my grandma later confirmed that I had measles that spring.
I’m pretty sure those measles accounted for the next memory: drinking liquid Jell-O from a pastel plastic baby bottle. (With a nipple with a big X in it, used to feed thinned out oatmeal cereal to very young babies so they’d sleep through the night.) Someone – probably my mom, but that part is hazy – was reading to me from Winnie the Pooh and I was amazed to see the text staggered around the illustration of Winnie up in a tree.
I tried to confirm some memories with my dad, but he gave me his standard line: “Juli, Juli – it was the ‘60s. I don’t remember much.” (This is the man that casually mentioned I’d had a seizure at 9 months old and I stopped breathing. He shared this bit of my medical history with me when I was 45.
He was surprised that I was stunned to just now hear it; it was only a petite mal, after all). He did share one memory he had, though. I was 2, and I came running into his bedroom talking excitedly about “The horses, the horses. They were running.” He told me, “Oh, you were dreaming.” I thought about it a minute and agreed, “Yes, I was thinking in pictures.” I don’t remember that incident, but it sounds about right.
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at ml****@so***.net.