My earliest memories are of my paternal grandmother’s (my father’s mother’s) house. I remember lying in a crib and staring out the window at something silver-colored and strange-looking mounted on the outside wall. When I was older, I realized that it must have been an electrical meter. I also remember sitting in a high chair in my grandmother’s kitchen. A large gray tabby cat named Tiger came over and stared up at me. Tiger had originally belonged to my parents, but they gave him to my grandmother after they moved to a new city and couldn’t take him along. I was only a baby then. My parents told me that Tiger was very jealous of me. When he saw me in my grandmother’s kitchen, he probably thought, “Uh oh, she’s back!” I think one reason why I love cats so much is that one of my earliest memories is of a cat.
My mom bending over me as I lay on a bed or table (a changing table maybe), this is just the merest snippet of a memory, but it’s still very clear, I believe it was when I was still an infant (I know that you’re not supposed to be able to remember back that far, but my cousin also had a short memory bit from when she was a baby that was verifiable by what she reported happening in the memory, when she told her parents, they remembered what she described too).
Anyway, mine was of my mother leaning over me (maybe changing my diaper), some sort of oldies (well it wasn’t oldies then, lol) was playing in the background. I remember her singing softly to it, and then as she leaned over me, her pony tail flipped forward and partially over one eye.
The whole scene was a bit fuzzy and the color wasn’t very good (almost like a sepia toned photo, only with colors, not just yellowed out black and white).
That’s it, the whole memory, but I have no idea how old I was, I’m only guessing because of how “rough” the memory is and the fuzziness and faded color.
You’re right in many instances. For example, I recall taking my first steps, but I know I was unable to recall this before I was told the story, and I’m pretty sure that if I saw the interior of where we lived at the time it wouldn’t match my memories.
I do have one memory that’s definitely genuine, though. I’m at home, watching, through a window, my Mom leave for work in her car. I’m really sad that she’s leaving. There’s someone else there that I see from behind, and she’s got huge frizzy hair. I had no idea who she was until I described her hair to my Mom. It turned out to be my babysitter/nanny.
We moved from that place when I was 26 months old and I never saw the nanny again, so I was probably around 2 when this happened.
quite a neutral memory:
3rd birthday:
My mother put my two older sisters and me on the field (it’s now been converted into a park, used to be a plain, grassy, field) in front of our house, to take a picture of the three of us. I was in the middle, with my card board fashioned crown on my head (they do that in kindergarden, make you a crown with the age represented in card board candles. Gold lamé paper. I remember being very proud of it).
It was very hot (my birthday’s in August), and it was the middle of the day. My mother started walking backwards, camera in front of her face, and I can clearly remember wondering when she was going to stop and take the picture. As it turns out, we were 3 little dots in the picture, in the middle of a green, grassy field. My mom always does that.
Never had an eye for a good picture.
