What Is Your Very Earliest Memory?

[Dinger]

Mine, I remember knocking the ornaments off the Christmas tree and my mom nailing the tree to the floor. I was 18 months old.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Dinger!

My earliest memory is from about the same age as yours...

I was around 17 months old, and my mom and I were living with my grandparents while my dad was in the Army.

There was a hallway and at the end of it was a glass paned door, with a glass doorknob. I remember crawling down the hall (I walked late) and reaching for the doorknob. I couldn't reach it, and I started to cry. Someone came to the other side of the door and opened it.

I actually told this story to my mom, who remembered it, and she verified the details were correct.

She thought I remembered it because it was traumatic...

:hi:

[ThomCat]

2. Being dressed by my grandmother with my twin

for a photo that was being taken. We were 2 years old. We were in matching stripped outfits. A professional photographer came to the apartment. We were posed on the coffee table in the living room.

I think my Mom still has that photo packed away somewhere.

[murielm99]

3. I have a similar memory.

My mother woke me up from a nap and got me dressed for a professional photo. The photographer came to our house.

I remember the occasion very clearly. I found out later that my mom had the picture taken because she was not taking care of me at all during that time. She was depressed after losing a baby, and could not take care of me or herself. Family friends had taken me in. Her psychiatrist suggested that she have the picture taken because I was changing and growing so fast during that period, and she would not have many memories of me or what I looked like.

I have that picture now.

[ThomCat]

5. I'm glad she was able to get the care she needed for her depression.

So many women don't or can't. :(

From the way you word your post it sounds like she recovered, took you back, and went on to raise you herself. I'm glad things worked out. :)

[murielm99]

8. She took me back, and had two more children.

They are my younger brothers.

I don't know about things working out. My mother is and always has been mentally ill. All three of us are, to some degree, screwed up because of her. My father is a classic enabler.

[Richardo]

Riding my tricycle to my grandparents' house

I might have been 3. We lived in the same development they did and were probably about 5 houses down the street.

[5thGenDemocrat]

4. Sitting on the front porch in my underwear, looking at the Sunday Detroit News comics section

I couldn't have quite been three -- it was warm and for some reason I remember the date "1959" on the masthead. Since I was born in October, I assume it was the summer before I turned three. I also remember mom and dad pulling into the driveway -- probably on their way home from Mass.
John
I don't remember what the first comic on the front page was, but I bet it was "Steve Canyon." Funny what sticks in a person's head.

[intheflow]

6. I remember my cousins coming to live with us

while their father went to a mental institution in another state and their mother went to live by him, but couldn't take the kids and work at the same time. I have very vivid memories of this. I always thought I was 3 or 4, but my mother recently told me that happened when I was about 18 months old.

[Doc_Technical]

7. Sitting in a high chair alone in a kitchen.

We were at my Uncle's house and everyone else was eating in the dining room
which was seperated from the kitchen by a door on spring hinges.
I remember that my Mother came in to check on me and i caught a glance
into the dining room with a formal place setting.
I later told my Mother about this and she said I was about one
year old.

[LeftyMom]

9. Going camping with my family and my Dad's best friend's family.

Their older son found a really cool piece of driftwood and gave it to me, and I still have it at my Dad's place somewhere. Their younger boy wasn't really old enough to play much (I was two so he must have been an infant) but I remember him being there. He died when we were teenagers- he had an extremely rare autoimmune disease. We didn't even know he was sick yet, and it would be years before somebody finally figured out just what was the matter with him. Remembering him makes me very sad, I spent half of my childhood playing with that kid.

[Mad_Dem_X]

10. The moon landing. I was 2-1/2.

I remember standing in front of the TV, watching the footage. My mom, 8 months pregnant with my baby sister, was either sitting in a chair or ironing clothes behind me. I assume that my father was at work.

[Blue Diadem]

11. Being put outside in the middle of the night for crying.

I was around 2 and woke up crying, most likely due to the VFD sirens that were going off. There were no street lights. It was a tiny rural neighborhood with only 2 houses separating us from farm land. I remember the door closing and how dark it was, being all alone and terrified on that front stoop and trying so hard to stop crying.

I didn't remember it until I was married and into my 30's. We'd moved from the city to a rural village that has a VFD. I had problems, up to the memory coming back, with hearing sirens especially at night for my entire life. I'd tremble inside and feel nervous but never understood why. Then one day I was taking a bath of all things, laying their relaxing while the kids were at school and the VFD sirens went off. It must have been my state of relaxation at the time, and I began to remember. My father picking me up out of the crib, he was wearing boxer shorts, walking to the front door in his arms, him yelling at me to shut up or he'd put me outside..then the door closing, leaving me outside alone in the dark.

My Mom was still alive and I asked her if that had ever happened. She confirmed it. Then I asked my oldest brother who is 14 yrs older than me, he confirmed it too. He told me he used to try to protect me from my Dad's rages.

My earliest happy memory, and I don't have many, is getting a puppy when I was 4.

[MilesColtrane]

12. I actually remember being in my crib in my parent's room.

Just images...a colorful mobile above me and the way the afternoon light was coming through the window...

[achtung_circus]

13. I recall

what must have been a Saturday night. Voices, music, laughter from the living room. I was in my crib and began crying. My mother walked in, I recall the high heels clicking, and gave me a bottle of apple juice and a hug.

All better. Delicious apple juice, too.

I must have been 16 months old or so.

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. 1949 Earthquake, Puget Sound...it was 7.1

I was 3 or so, outside playing in yard, sunny day , it was April, and I heard a siren, long wail going up and then down in sound.
Like the Alert type siren, tho why it would go off I don't know.
then the quake struck and I was standing alone in what seemed like a huge yard and Mom was standing
in the doorway of our house screaming at me. I assume she was trying to get me to come in the house?
dunno.
I hear ya, Blue Diadem. For years sirens would weird me out, until I remembered the quake.
I have a pic taken around the same time, says I was 3, ( my birthday is late in the year)

then of course we had all those "hide under your desks" and sirens for Nuclear Holocaust practice..
I am surprised any of us grew up halfway sane.

[Left Is Write]

15. It was 1968. It was springtime, so I'm guessing early June -

right before I turned two (I turned two at the end of June, 1968).

My dad and my grampa were building a screened porch on the back of the house. I came outside and tripped over a cement block. I also landed on a cement block. I remember falling and landing. I remember my father scooping me up, rushing into the house, and screaming for my mother. I remember how it felt being carried in my father's arms.

I had hit myself in the face, between my upper lip and my nose. The accident damaged the bud of one of my permanent front teeth, and when it came in years later, it was bruised (I was able to have that fixed when I was an adult).

It's a pretty strong memory, even though I don't remember the entirety of the incident. It's like an intense flash of those couple of minutes.

[Parche]

16. Teacher Dinger

JFK on TV

:loveya: :hug:

[femmocrat]

17. My mom and baby brother coming home from the hospital.

I was two.

[RagAss]

18. The live broadcast murder of Lee Oswald by Jack Ruby.

Staged by the true murderers of JFK, of course !

[Glorfindel]

19. Being pushed in my baby carriage by my older siblings

They were 14, 12, and 10 when I was born. The carriage was a big black thing with a hood that could be raised or lowered. The sidewalk in front of our house had a flight of steps going up a hill. Naturally, the three of them loved to pull me up the steps and then take me down bump, bump, bump. I don't know how old I was at the time exactly, but probably not much more than one year old.