AND THEN I KNEW... MY EARLIEST MEMORIES

Photo: Daddy and Possumfrog (Skitch) 

THEN:


 
        I can often remember things from forty-five years ago better than I can things that happened yesterday. My long term memory is impressive in a good way and my short term is sort of on the other end of that spectrum. I'd forget my head, as my mother has told me many times, if it wasn't attached to my neck.
        Most of my memories are tied to certain homes, but the earliest were sludgy, like I didn't know where I lived. Later, I asked questions and found out where we were living when "this" or "that" happened, but at the time I was a bit of a gypsy in my own little head, barely knowing that I "lived" anywhere, for everywhere was the same big world and hadn't I always been here?
        One of my favorite writers, Kevin Leman says your first memories shape you. I have absolutely no reason to doubt that and a few reasons to believe that it is spot on. Here are my earliest memories with a little fill in information from my family:

THE HOUSE IN OHIO

        We lived in Ohio when I turned a year old. My mother and my aunt tell me they potty trained me at 13 months. Between the two ladies they'd shared nine other babies and my Aunt Nancy was through with diapers! She told my mother I was smart and would potty train easily and early. Auntie made me about a dozen pair of frilly "big girl" panties, put them on me, and asked me to keep them clean. The ladies say I had only an accident or two after that day. I don't remember wearing a diaper. I do remember sitting on the stoop of our home with my daddy, wearing big girl panties and a pair of overalls that I really liked. We were both holding an ice cream cone and trying to keep up with the drips before they hit our fingers. Daddy paused in his ice cream eating long enough to say, "Possumfrog. You see that bush over yonder?" He pointed to a shrub near the edge of the yard, and I nodded. "I'm thinking about digging it up and moving it over here to the side of the stoop." He motioned to one side of the steps were were sitting on. "Then move that one over there to the other side." He pointed at another shrub and then the other side of the steps. "What do you think? You think that would look good?"
        I stopped battling the drippy ice cream long enough to look at each of those bushes and actively imagine them on each side of the doorway. It looked good! I smiled and nodded at my daddy. "You think it'd look good?" He pressed.
        "Yep. It'd look real good!"

        And then I knew... My opinion matters.



RAMEY FLATS     

    My pop had moved into an area called Ramey Flats or "The Flats" as locals called it, when he was three or four years old. He's told me the story of riding along on the top of the furniture his parents were bringing with them from Kentucky and his first look at that lonesome river that became a sister to us all, The Pound River. When I was somewhere between one and two years old, we lived at my dad's old home place for a time. I remember taking a walk with my father. Taking several baby steps for each one his longer legs took, and yet being determined to keep up. We walked up the hill near the house and turned and looked down from the vantage we now had. I marvled at how much smaller everything became when you walked away from it. Dad looked down and me and then pointed at the acorns on the ground all around us. "Do you know what this is?" He squatted and picked one up, held it close to my face, and allowed me to take it from his fingers. I shook my head. I did not know. "That's a fairy cup." He said, and picked up another. He tipped it to his mouth like having a drop of tea. "Last night the fairies had a big party here. When the sun came up they tossed down their cups and went home to bed, but we know they were here because their cups are lying all over the place. Look at what a party they had!" He motioned to all the scattered acorns and smiled at me when I pretended to drink from the acorn shell. He turned to go and I followed.

        And then I knew... Magic is all around us.


THE RESTAURANT HOUSE

        I remember living in a house that had a room full of benches with tall backs and tables between them. Later, my family told me that memory was of a restaurant that we rented as a home. We lived in the rooms in back and used the restaurant area as a living room. I remember having a crib bed when we lived there. It had a painting of a lamb on the headboard. The lamb had two ribbons around it's neck. They were blowing in the wind, one pink and one blue. I remember playing with a pink toy phone in the floor of that odd living room. I kept getting up and approaching the others, trying to get the "adults" (even my sisters who were probably 14 and 12 seemed like adults to me) to talk to me on my level, to explain this strange toy to me. I liked the sounds it made and the way it looked and felt, but what was the purpose of this object? What did it represent? When I tried to ask the adults would simply tell me it was a "phone" or a "telephone". They might say hello into the handle part, and then they would slip back into words, phrases, ideas that they shot at each other quickly, like bullets from a gun, words that I could not yet follow. I wondered what the toy phone was and why the adults kept telling me to talk into it. I'd never seen a real phone, but I liked the funny ringing sound it made when I did what they called "dial it", and I liked the sound of the adults talking, even though I had no idea what they were saying. The sound enveloped me like a warm blanket and left me feeling comfortable and safe.

        And then I knew... We are all in this together, even if we don't always understand each other.



THE RESTAURANT HOUSE AGAIN
        
        In this same house my mother's favorite uncle lived with us for a while. Great Uncle Luther was old and frail, and I was told to be "good" around him. He lounged in a yard chair most of the day, the kind made out of flat straps of something that was not quite cloth and not quite plastic. One day I was hanging around his chair, looking at him, wondering things I could not even express yet. Wondering why he looked so different from the other adults. Who put those lines in his face? Why was his hair so thin and white? Why must I be extra "good" just because of him? Uncle Luther asked to see my doll, and I trustingly handed her over. Sometimes adults would pretend to rock or feed her and that was fun for me. It was like very short sessions with a playmate, and I greatly enjoyed their sinking to my level. But Uncle Luther did not play with me. He promptly pulled on my dollies arm and legs until, to my great horror, he had them all removed from her body. I was distressed but he kept hushing me, and wasn't I supposed to be "good"? He put her back together, but he put the legs where the arms were supposed to be and the arms where the legs were supposed to be. Then he handed the doll to me. I did not want that mixed up dolly! I wanted my dolly with arms at the top and legs at the bottom, just like every person and every other dolly I had seen. I tried to pull the limbs off and fix her myself but I was not strong enough. I pouted and whined. I tried to convince him to put her back the way she was before, but he only laughed delightedly. On the verge of true, wet tears, I took my mixed up dolly through the house and found my mother. She was talking to others, but I pressed the dolly hard against her legs and whined.
        She turned to me and laughed, "What happened to your dolly?"
         "Uncle Luther!" I drug the name out like a curse.
        Mother laughed again, but she started fixing the doll. While she fixed it she scolded him, "That mean old Uncle Luther shouldn't mess up your dolly, should he?" I shook my head. "You won't give it back to him, now will you?" She said before handing it back to me, and I shook my head again. She handed me the doll and I smiled, happy to have her back to normal.
   
    And then I knew... Sometimes it doesn't pay to be good!



WHERE WERE WE?

        I have one other memory that was formed before I had a good idea of where I was in the world. I lean toward believing this one happened in Ohio, because I seemed to be in the same place in my head and my understanding of the world seems about the same as it was then, but I am not certain where we were.
        I had two uncles that were in my life with regularity and I loved both dearly. Uncle Leslie was my dad's younger brother, the "baby" of their original family, and Uncle Jr. was my mother's older and only brother. She had another brother, Ray, but he died before I was born and her baby brother, David, was stillborn. Crit Miller, who came to live with us when I was five, would become some sweet mixture of an Uncle/Brother, but this was in the days when Crit lived with my grandfather and cared for him in his old age. Those three were the only uncles I had that were in my life enough for me to get to know them.
        Uncle Leslie was not only my dad's brother but he was, near as I can tell, his best lifelong friend. And Uncle's wife, my Aunt Nancy was my mother's first cousin and dearest, life long friend. So, their family and mine often lived near each other or even in the same house. Auntie and Uncle were second parents and firm fixtures in my life and heart.
        Uncle Leslie took lessons to learn to fly a plane and, once he got his license, he talked my father into going up in the small vehicle. Mother was invited but said she'd keep both her feet on the ground, thank you very much! Uncle entreated them to allow me to go (my sisters, Sandi and Lila, must have been at school) and he met with some resistance but he and Daddy talked my mother into allowing me the ride. I am so glad they did!
        I remember that I could not even grasp the concept of being up in the air really high like a bird. I wondered what that would be like but my normally active imagination fell flat and failed me. Would it be like looking down a hill? I did not have to wonder long however, for it was not very many minutes after I was granted permission to go that I found myself perched on my pop's lap and looking out the window at my waving, fearful mother.
        Then the magic happened. Momma got smaller and smaller until she looked like a doll, and until I could not even see her anymore because the plane was going not only up but away. I felt infinitely safe in my daddy's arms, but I wished Mother had gone with us. I looked with wonder at the world below us and saw that it was now much like a giant quilt of brown and green patchwork. Tiny toyish cows stuck their noses to the quilt and tiny toyish cars moved along the black and brown roads that separated the patchwork pieces. How much I could see! And yet, I could not see my mother, or the detail of the grass. I had gained the big picture but lost the small one. People, I considered, must be like ants and God must look down on us and wonder at our silliness as I wondered at the odd antics of ants. Did God, step over us with care, trying to not end our small existence and to allow it to run it's course with nature? That is what Lila had taught me to do with the ants, to step over them and allow them to live out their lives. Who taught God to step over the puny little humans? Did God have a big sister? And if so, why wasn't she the God? How could we be so important and so small at the same time? Perhaps the ants lives seemed very important to them as well and that was why Lila had taught me to step over them.
        How different everything looked from up here! How small and unimportant and yet even more beautiful than normal, more beautiful than I knew how to express! Though my dad and uncle would shout short statements at each other now and then, I deemed it was too loud in this little airplane to ask questions or discuss the beauty of the ride. I sat in silence and awe.
   
    And then I knew... We are important and insignificant at the same time, and the world is full of splendor and questions!