I have been thinking a lot about memories lately.
With all the new writing I am doing.
All my life I have believed my first childhood memory to be two linked moments when I was in a push chair looking at outdoor fresh water fish in a tank at a neighbours house. Our neighbour on the road that ran along the beach front had a line of concrete above-ground fish-tanks at their house. They were within walking distance so I am of the impression that my mother had me out for a walk in the pushchair.
My memory is of not being able to see the fish in the concrete ponds. I was in a push chair so I must have been quite young. No one was allowed in a push chair after they could confidently walk.
So let’s estimate 2 and a bit years old? It was winter I think.
This was not a movie style memory. There are two very clear still shots of the visit. Fragments.
The first is of sitting in the pushchair riding along on the footpath outside the fish tank place.
The second is a view from the entrance to their driveway; straight down the drive to the concrete fishtanks tanks that ran down the right hand side of the driveway. A couple with green water in them. A few empty. The concrete was stippled with beach stones, not smooth. Grey and black and white and sharp. But the driveway was smooth and green with a little patch of tufty grass running down the middle.
I have the impression of disappointment and wintry dreariness.
I have two – well three – problems with this memory. The shot of me outside the fence on the footpath was from the side. Shooting straight into the pushchair – low from the side. How could I see it from the side if I was IN the pushchair. The second problem is the view of the fish tanks – I would have to have been high up to see them lined up like that. My memory tells me I was in the pushchair the whole time. We just popped in on the way to somewhere. And thirdly I cannot remember my mother taking anyone for a walk. She was not a friendly walky visity pop – in kind of person.
Or, maybe she was a friendly kind of person before the car accident scarred her face and took her voice and her teeth.
Maybe there was a pre-accident Mary and a post-accident Mary. It is possible. Probable even. I never thought about that before.
In those old beach houses there was a lot of concrete in the front yards. Often no grass at all. The gardens were in the backyard out of the sea winds. Concrete in the front. Low concrete walls, rocks set into concrete, concrete surrounded flower beds filled with beach stones – small areas for some stunted dry beach plants and maybe a pine. Low concrete walls and high concrete walls. A lot of the landscaping in those post 40’s beach front properties was uninspired concrete. Easy maintenance maybe?
The concrete was often coloured too – green or pink and always too hot for our bare feet.
Profoundly ugly. Skinned knees. No running.
(WaiWai only likes to eat whole orange or red capsicums – he won’t eat green ones! The bottom shot is the Big Pigs dinner – they like their veges chopped up!)
I wonder where the rest of that day out walking with my Mum went. Can the memory bank get full? And memories spill like kittens out of a box and run away?
My chariot awaits. Time to start mowing .
The days are getting longer. It is very still and very overcast today and my face aches. Which means the barometric pressure is dropping. I wish I had a working barometer again. Mine is broke. My face is my barometer now.
So, what is your earliest memory?
Have a gorgeous day!
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
68 responses to “What is Your First Childhood Memory?”
My earliest memory is from when I was between two and three. My brother and I had been on a camping trip with my paternal grandmother, great-grandmother and great aunt. I had fallen into the campfire. That’s all story to me. What I remember is sitting on a high table. To my left is a row of oak cabinets on the wall and a counter. I see a doctor’s white coat and my grandmother’s face. It’s just a flash of vision. I think it’s from when they were examining my burns and patching me up, applying the dressing.
And I’m with Wai-Wai: I’ll eat hot green capsicums, but not the sweet ones (We call them green peppers here).
That is a great memory. Just that flash. Falling in a fire sounds very nasty.
(Trying again in two parts after 4 failures yesterday!)
I love reading all these memories!
Here is my earliest memory at less than 2 years old (from the first page of my memoir ‘Touching Snow’ about my Taranaki NZ childhood):
‘She lifted me up, hedge-high. Suddenly I was face to face with another little girl, just my size, who was being lifted up on the other side of the hedge. We gazed at each other from the safety of our mothers’ arms. We reached out but our arms were short and stubby, not long enough to touch. It was then that I saw the pink and white trumpet flowers stretching their necks out of the dark foliage, crying ‘Touch me! Touch me!’
I love reading all these memories!
Here is my earliest memory at less than 2 years old (from the first page of my memoir ‘Touching Snow’ about my Taranaki NZ childhood):
‘She lifted me up, hedge-high. Suddenly I was face to face with another little girl, just my size, who was being lifted up on the other side of the hedge. We gazed at each other from the safety of our mothers’ arms. We reached out but our arms were short and stubby, not long enough to touch. It was then that I saw the pink and white trumpet flowers stretching their necks out of the dark foliage, crying ‘Touch me! Touch me!’
A little friend and the flowers. That is a very sweet image the mothers talking over the fence and lifting the children up to say hullo to each other. I love that one.
Part two: (7th time trying to post!)
This was my first memory. Something about that surprising lift out of the ordinary left a deep thumb print in my sponge-like sensibility. My mother’s lift showed me a different hedge: not the clipped leafy barrier I saw from my place on the ground, but a flowering wonder sprouting wild secrets from its top. At the same time I was offered the little girl, the same size as me: a possible friend.
This may have been the beginning of my desire to see further, to know what lay over the hedge, across the bridge, up the mountain and later over the ocean, into foreign language, landscape and culture and eventually across time and space.’
I am so sorry you are having such a hard time posting- thank you so much for persevering. I will go and pour a wine and come back for a read.
Yes! I see how that memory expanded into a lifetime of exploring. Really wonderful. And again thank you so much for persevering – a couple of your attempts did come through.
Yes, I got there in the end. Sorry about the double posting. I hoped you could remove the duplicate. The system seemed to need a few hours to digest the post and finally show it!
My very earliest memory is of being in my grandparents’ dining room. It was at the back of the house and had french doors out into the back yard, and the light in the room was green and watery, quite beautiful. We lived next door to the grandparents, the houses had a common wall and the interiors were mirror images, but I know it was the grandparents’ because the walls were not white, the curtains were dark and heavy instead of pale linen and there were pictures and a sideboard instead of book cases! The second memory is of walking out of our front gate and up the road a short way to meet Pa from the train, my mother holding my hand. I was less than two, as I remember Ma being ‘fat’ (ie, pregnant with my younger sister), so we wouldn’t have made it much of the quarter mile to the station!
I love the image of you walking with your Mum, her being pregnant. Was Pa your father or your grandfather. My Pa was my grandfather.
Pa was my father, my grandfather was called Ba or Taid, the Welsh for grandpa. Ba was a teacher; his father had been down the pits in Wales and wanted his son to make something of himself.
Down in the pits. Hard work. Awful really.
Brutal. And dangerous. He had the right idea, getting his boy out of there and into something else.
I hate green sweet peppers too. Sometimes we buy a bag of mixed colours because it is cheaper – but I have to chop up the green ones really small to disguise them in things.
My earliest memory is watching the first moon landing on TV when I was three. But I genuinely have almost no memories of my childhood at all.
Watching the moon landing on the TV is an extraordinary memory. Did you ant to be an astronaut after that – like all the rest of us? The rest of the worlds kids!!
No. But I probably wanted the rest of the world to go there and leave me alone😂
I know I’m extremely late in responding but I think my first (or earliest) childhood memory is of a house we lived in when I was 3 or 4. I remember most that it had a peach and a cherry tree in the back yard. Sweetest fruit ever!
The sweetness was the memory. How lovely . Morning Miss T.
Afternoon Miss C.