Monday, May 2, 2016

Day 2: Earliest Memory

I don't have one specific earliest memory; instead I have multiple little snippets of memories from the first house we lived in.

Our family owned four connected lots. My Great-Grandparents' house was up on the hill, followed by my uncle's undeveloped acre lot. Next in line was my Grandma's lot - she didn't live there when I was little, instead she rented out her property. Last was our little red house.

I loved our little red house.

My dad went away to Texas A&M for the fire academy when I was three-ish and I remember sleeping in my footie pajamas on a bean bag one night until it was time to pick him up. If I recall correctly, I slept in that bean bag frequently once he got hired on as a firefighter at Kodak. Mom would pack Nebalee and me up in the car in the middle of the night to go pick him up after his shifts.

There was something very comforting about feeling Mom pick me up from the bean bag and carry me out to the running car. It took me no time to get comfy and fall back to a deep sleep once we were on the road.

There was a little farm not very far from us, where Mom would take us to buy milk and honey combs. She'd skim the cream off the milk to use with fruit, which I don't remember very well. What I do remember is her love of honey combs. She'd buy one, upend it in a jar and let the honey drain out. Then she'd munch on the comb itself.

We had a white leather couch and one of my least favorite memories is of Mom laying me down in her lap to floss my teeth. I inherited her bad teeth and they were literally rotting out of my head as soon as they came in. Mom put in her time wrestling a very wiggly, angry toddler every night to floss my teeth. The dentist even put me on a sugar-free diet for six months and at my return visit I had a whole mouthful of new cavities. I hate that those are some of my most prominent memories (but probably not as much as Mom does.).

It's funny, trying to write down these memories. I am certain of them when I think about them, but as soon as I type them, I start second-guessing. Was the couch really the white leather (pleather)? What color was the bean bag? (Black, I think). How many of my memories have been "corrupted" by time?

1 comment:

Allenspark Lodge said...

Wow! You did really well, and it's comforting to me to know that 'packing you guys up in the middle of the night' did not create awful memories. I recovered that couch in the white pleather with my trusty sewing machine.

Mom