Earliest Memories

I wonder how far back a person can actually remember. Can a person remember back as far as one year of age or even before? I know that as the years pass my ability to retain information is quickly failing. I don't feel like I was ever very good at committing things to memory but there must have been a time in my distant childhood that it came much easier. I remember my mother telling me that when I participated in my first church Christmas program I not only knew my own lines but everyone else's too. I couldn't have been more than four or five at the time. But as the years went on, things just didn't seem to stick anymore.

This forgetfulness was definately not inherited from my mother. She remembers the full name and birthdate of every relative, friend, piano student and church member. She can tell you the exact date that her children and grandchildren cut teeth and began to walk. She knows who married who on what date. She can remember all the important and not so important days in the lives of her three children. She could tell you what song was playing on the radio when her father came home from work on June 28, 1936! I can barely remember what I did last week! I feel like a terrible mother because I can't remember when my son first went diaper free or what my daughter's first word was. I don't remember how each child reacted after their first day of school, the names of their friends in first grade or the names of their teachers.

I wonder what makes us remember the random things that we do remember. I can remember playing with a black marble while bathing in a large washtub. We didn't have running water until I was nine, but other than the wash tub bath I don't remember much about being without this modern convenience. I vaguely remember going to the outhouse and using the chamber pot that was kept in my parents bedroom but don't really remember how I went about getting a drink of water or seeing my mother pump water to wash dishes. I couldn't have been very old in order to fit into that washtub but why do I remember that and not much else from those early years?

At the age of five or so I remember taking some bright red finger nail polish that wasn't mine. The neighbor girl and I were the culprits who stole the polish but I don't remember where we got it or which one of us took it or how we got it out of the store. I do remember going crazy with the stuff... painting leaves and grass and clovers. I know that my mother found out and made me go back to the store and tell the manager what I had done... but I don't remember actually doing that.

Another very early memory is staying on my grandparents farm overnight and hopping out of bed onto a very, very cold floor. The bed in an upstairs bedroom was piled high with blankets and quite warm but, oh that cold wood floor! And the chickens on that farm were not very nice either! I remember going out into the chicken yard with my grandma when she spread the feed around for the little critters. They seemed to converge on me from every direction and all I could see were chickens. I had nightmares about those foul fowls for a long time afterward.

Most of the memories I have from my earliest childhood really aren't my memories. They are pictures that have been placed in my mind from the stories of others. They say if you hear something enough times it becomes real.