I remember watching my grandfather fix a broken step on his staircase. I remember watching my sister crawl around after a doll that crawled and she almost fell down those steps. I told this to my Mom and she said that happened when I was about 6 months old because that house went up in flames in April 1972.
I have three vivid memories of Yokohama Japan, which therefore must be from before age four, since I lived there only up until I was almost four. I have no dates, and my parents were not involved in them except peripherally, and could not have told me about them.
One is hiding under the floor of the “Japanese house” down the hill behind our home. I remember the dark dirt, and the smell of the food cooking, mixed with other smells. I remember not understanding the people talking, and being surprised by that. I remember the lattice work shadows from the setting sun which reminded me to get out of there and go home. (I was definitely not supposed to be there.) I don’t remember if the “houseboy” who was supposed to be watching me got into trouble. I did.
I also remember a clump of moss, growing on the top of a stone retaining wall, which gradually rose to a height far higher than my head, in our yard, or the neighbors yard. I had walked up the top of the wall, and sat down on the edge when I got scared of being so high. Said houseboy was not available to get me down, right away. I sat examining the moss for a very long time. I remember that smell very vividly as well. I remember the dark pool of shade from the overhanging Mimosa trees on the top of the bank. I also remember how dry the moss was at the edge, and how it gradually faded from green to brown over the distance from the tree roots to the wall. It was a hot day, and I had to pee, pretty bad.
I remember being forced to wear a suit, for pictures. My first dress up clothes. I hated it. I hated everything about it, and I hated having to spend all day doing nothing, for fear that my clothes would get dirty. I remember the photographer, who was an asshole, and his assistant, who was pretty. She was Japanese, but very western in her speech, and dress. I remember sitting there in the tiny chair, pretending to be drawing, with a wooden thing that wasn’t a crayon. I never saw any pictures from that photographer. I certainly didn’t smile for him.
Tris
That should be 1973. I wasn’t even born in April 1972.
I remember my grandfather, who died when I was 2 and a half, so I guess my earliest memory is around age 2.
Oddly enough I don’t remember him dying, although I’m told that at the time I knew that he had gone to heaven and I was afraid that everyone else in the house was going to leave, too. Mom couldn’t go to the bathroom alone for quite a while.
Both of my grandfathers died when I was two, I remember one of them but I’m not sure which one.
I also remember when I first started to think in words. One of the first things I thought in words was “Hey, I can make my brain sound like a story!”
I was an only child and still in diapers at the time so I had to have been under two. I remember lying in my crib on my back and looking at the room upside-down and being amused by it. I also remember tearing my diaper off in that same memory. I watched the cottony pieces of the lining fly over my head onto the floor. :o