May 1, 2013
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What is your earliest memory? How old were you at the time?
My first memories are of things that happened when I was about 3 years old. I was a foster child for a time before being adopted into the family that I spent most of my life with, and still am a part of. My foster parents were loving people, but wanted to keep me as a baby, so they purposely didn’t teach me how to do things for myself.
I remember standing at the top of a stairway, wanting to go down, but not knowing how.When I visited the home of my soon-to-be family they gave me a toy dog that moved. Its feet had wheels; when you pulled the string attached to his head & front legs, his slinky body pulled his back end along behind. I’m told that my bossy foster sister broke it when I took it home.
The first thing when they picked me up to live with them, my new parents took us out for ice cream to celebrate. My memory is of sitting at the counter, looking at that ice cream, and wanting some. My parents thought I didn’t eat because I was nervous, or excited. The truth was, I had never been taught how to use a spoon or other utensils, because my foster mother wanted to feed me. I’m told that soon after that, my grandmother on my Mom’s side taught me how to use a spoon.
Comments (80)
Wow.
My first memory is of playing on a pool toy – killer whale in my back yard, as it had mysteriously(to me) turned into a lake. And I remember my Mom yelling at me and my friend to come back inside! (the water had salmonella in it…) Later I found out that there had been a hurricane that flooded our neighborhood, I thought the memory was a dream until I was about 17, and my friend asked me if I remembered it too…
well at least you know how to use one now. ^_^
@Bella_87 - Cool memory! I have a dream that seems more like a memory. Wile E Coyot few past my window and looked in at me from a flying saucer!
@ALovingAdversary - Yeah, I hardly am starving! lol
“I’m told that soon after that, my grandmother on my Mom’s side taught me how to use a spoon.” I don’t know why, but that quote from your blog made me smile.
Glad I made you smile. I smiled as I was writing it too. My grandma rocked! Both of them, each in their own way, meant alot to me. Both grandfathers wer gone before I came along. One great-grandma lived to be 104, and traveled til just a few years before she died.
Happy Free Hug Day!!! *offers hug*
@Miracles33 - Hug back! I love hugs.
of course i’ll add you. ^_^ I love adding new people because it broadens my subscriptions on xanga. ^_^
@Miracles33 - I feel the same!
YAY!!! My first hug!!! *hugs*
My hugs carry no conditions, but if you choose to rec me I will be very happy!
Hmmmm… mine was when I was about 2 and I was walking up to the big gum tree in my backyard, with my puppy, and I saw this massive green grub. I looked at it and shoved it in my mouth, bit of a piece for my dog, and sat in the sun and we just chewed. It was not nice :]
@lonelywanderer2 - That is awesome! lol.
I remember riding on my Dad’s shoulders and being scared. I was pretty little. Maybe 2?
You!
Your message intrigued me…
As did this post. I dated a former foster-care boy once, for a year. He was in foster care from ages 12-14. Tomorrow is his 4-year anniversary of getting out of foster care. He had a really rough time and we had a really rough relationship, which I’m hoping the bad habits I picked up won’t end up messing up my current relationship, but I’m working on it.
Like your memory, my first memory was also tragic in nature. I remember having my parents take me to my first session of day care when I was 2 years old. Months later (at least I presume it was months) I remember watching a movie in day care about a witch and for some reason, finding it painful and traumatic. My second memory is of crying and begging my parents to not take me back. My third memory is of having a lady ask me where someone hurt me and I gave a response and then remembered something that was too graphic to post on your Xanga and pointing to another body part. I had forgotten about these memories until I was 16, when my parents called me into the family room and said, “Now we’re only going to tell you what we’re about to say because some people repress it and it really screws them up inside…”
that is a very interesting memory and life experience all in all…My first memories are of watching t.v. with my dad…alot of my memories have him in it…he passed away last october.
My earliest memory was when I was celebrating my first birthday sitting in my high chair, My parents were trying to take a picture of me and I stuck my hand in the cake. Great Write, Happy Valentines. Judi
Interesting…I love all the weird things we can remember.
@heterophobic_female_chauvinist - they made you go back?
in some ways I can appreciate that they didn’t want you to repress anything… but I’m not sure that would’ve been the easiest way to come to terms with something…
my family would rather i had repressed the things that happened to me, and they don’t understand why i still can’t…
How old? I have not slight idea.
@Bella_87 - I think it was best that I knew, but the timing was bad. It was less than a year after I had my first rational thought after coping with abuse I went through when I was 9. I was really depressed that I went through all that work (which they knew nothing about, I was good at hiding my depression) and then had to go through the same things all over again, plus I found out in the process that the last 14 years of my life was a lie. But I’m pretty much okay now. Just trying to cope with some mistakes I’ve made as a result.
I think it’s always best that the kid knows and it sucks that your family doesn’t understand.
skiing in colorado. 2 and a half. I wasn’t really skiing, but I remember running away from the daycare nazis when I saw my parents in a lift line.
heh
Thank you for sharing your earliest memories. I was about three during my earliest memories as well, thank you for sharing
In Christs Love
Michelle~
Does this still bother you at all? It sounds like it could still be a pretty upsetting memory to have…
My first memory was laying on a blanket in our living room and having a baby girl laid down next to me while I was playing with some toys we had way back when so her mom could chat with the other adults in the room. (yes I remember which toys they were, but no, I don’t know how or how I knew the other baby was a girl or what the adults were up to…
)
Wow. What people do to their children for their own selfish wants.
I don’t know what my first memory is. But I think my earliest memories are from when I was 5. At least, I think I was 5 when these things happened. haha. *0.o
@overly_toasted_bread - I think to a degree even my adoptive parents treated me as if I was somewhat behind in emotional development, even though I am very smart and caught up quickly. I’m now 46, and have changed a lot. I’m fairly strong and unafraid of a physical confrontation. I’m also fairly confident in many ways. I like to think these early memories no longer affect me at all, but the human psyche is complicated. Great question, though!
I think my earliest memory was walking around the neighborhood in the summer with my mom and seeing images of Desert Storm on television and I think I was about 4 or 5.
My first memory is going to see my younger brother at the hospital. That’s just barely slipping away though…
i have memories from when we lived in Michigan… and thats age 2 and under.
i remember watching ‘Star Wars’ with my dad
i remember leaving one early morning with my mom to drive to Iowa and she told me to go wake up my PaPa
i remember looking up and seeing my nightlight- a pilot in a plane.
crazy, huh?
My earliest memory is in third person, but it’s me, as a baby, in a blue crib, with a “The Little Mermaid” blanket. I’m sitting up and looking around my room, whimpering a little because my mom isn’t in the room, and my grandma’s cat jumps up into my crib and licks my face.
My first memory I was 21 months old, I was sitting on the hospital bed and my mom told me we were bringing “baby” home. (baby being my nameless little sister) All I told her was no. Then I don’t remember much until I was probably 4.
I remember sneaking into the kitchen to snag a chunk of icing off a birthday cake that my mom told me to stay away from.. having sat on mini dust bunnies thinking they were ants crawling in my diapers and telling my mom in tears.. eating my first AlmondJoy as I stood on the couch.. thinking it tasted gross, and was shaped like a phone.. screaming and crying as mom pulled me away from the high chair, while I tried to reach for dad.. and vice versa. Sitting outside with mom on a warm day, and she points to a bearded pedestrian telling me about “Ong ke” (kidnapper) which sort of sounded like “ong keo” (mr. candy) ..and having her explain to me the differences, and actually including that sometimes kidnappers do pass out candy.. Wearing a pair of shoes, returning home to stomp on as many cockroaches possible.. Crying and looking at the staircase, waiting for mom to come back in at night. There’s a lot more- I can’t tell which was the earliest.. or what happened later after another. Was 2, 3, or 4
Now that I think about it, most of these memories are pretty.. pessimistic. I’m still the same!
@BlehhItsTu - Wow; amazing things to remember!
A beach party. I must have been three. I wandered away from the adults and walked along the beach alone for a few minutes before my mother came and got me.
@La_Chose_En_Soi - Nice memory!
my first memories are all bad.
Wow the sick things that people will do. My mom had a student whose mom did the same thing to her. She would request to come in to her kindergarten class and feed her, because she was “sick” eventually they figured out the mother had Munchausen by proxy and had to pull the little girl out of the home before the mother did something worse, she had to be taught how to eat by herself too. She would dig with her silverware.
But I don’t know my earliest memory… I don’t know which one comes first.
I remember being at a picnic and double dipping veggies and my mom scolding me and my uncle telling her it was okay, because three year olds didn’t have germs anyway.
@FallingSafely - Three-year-olds don’t have germs, haha, too funny!
my earliest recollection of life was laying in bed with my little sister with socks over my hands and lotion all over my body cuz we both had chicken pox. my sister was born with the chicken pox, so that’s when this happened. i was born in february of 1991, my sister was born in november of 1992…so i was less than 2 years old in my earliest memory of life. i find this interesting because the average age for a person’s earliest memory is about age 4. so i was VERY young.
earliest memory : back when I was 3 I used to live / sleep with my grandparents
I woke up in the middle of the night and realized my grandma was gone, ran to the kitchen and there she was cooking breakfast for my uncle.
It’s probably 5 or 6am I was tired and cranky, I told my grandma to piggy back me
She said : No cause shes busy cooking and told me to go back to sleep
I said: I WANT A PIGGY BACK NOW OR ELSE I’LL SCREAM AND WAKE UP THE WHOLE HOUSE lol
I was a spoiled brat when I was a kid
@phuck_diz_shiz - Haha; great story!
This will probably sound weird but I remember things in memories more so than people. My mom was the active parent (dad was there but didnt do much) & she worked at night, so I remember sitting on the bed watching Muppet Babies & Disney Afternoon alot. You cant be mad at mom, she needed the sleep & what else could I do but watch TV. My mind didnt go soft though. I watched GOOD programs, including stuff on PBS!
One of the most vivid memories I have actually involves head trauma. I was 4, like almost 5 when we signed up for this bowling league & I was playing tag with some girl & she jumped over a chair. So I copied her….big mistake. My foot got caught & I just remember falling in slow motion & the floor rising up & hitting me in the head. Then I got up screaming & my mom threw the bowling bowl & was trying to get me to the car but the alley owner was telling her to give back the damn shoes.
I was pretty lucky not to get paralyzed or get brain damage from that fall. I probably fell exactly right to avoid a more serious injury, so I thank God for that. And the doctor in the ER was pretty cool, he stitched me so that I didnt have a bad scar. Unless your nose is pressed against my head, you cant see it above my right eyebrow. I made scars cool way before Harry Potter! XD
wow.
I don’t have any early memories. Nothing before the age of nine… maybe later. It’s weird because I have a very good memory now.
@positivelyunsure - I was born in February of 1991 too. ^^
I remember talking on the phone to my mom, who was in the hospital, having just given birth to my baby brother. I had chicken pox. I had just turned three.
wow… touching memory
mine would be around 5 or 7… playing in the house of our neighbor whose supposed to be a grandfather of mine and one involved in national politics.. we used to go to their house and play around in the rooms that has these secret doors…
and yes, those old telephones…
P, reading this made me cry. Your story makes me so grateful.
I think my earliest memory was at children’s memorial in chicago. I seem to recall being in an incubator, but i was a baby, so i dont really know how that could be (!?) either that, or when i had catheter stuck in my thigh for heart surgery (4). I recall rooming with a boy who was dying from leukemia. My mom sang to us both that night.
( my mom later filled me in on the details. The doctors at the time claimed the leukemia was somehow related to the kid eating a twinkie –weird!)
I was about 2 1/2 and we had just arrived in Puerto Rico and my cousins treated me like an alien and called my gringa.
I think I was somewhere between two and three. My brother was either not born yet or had recently been born, which I know happened when I was about two and a half, so it was somewhere around there. My mother and I went to the church to talk to the priest about my brother’s baptism. I don’t remember my mother being pregnant, so I think it was after, but I remember walking up a very tall flight of stairs leading to the rectory. I don’t remember what happened after that, I just remember walking up the stairs and my mother explaining to me where we were going.
After that, all my memories are of prekindergarten, which would be from when I was four. I might have some others before that, but it’s hard to tell how old I am sometimes and they all kind of blur together when you go back really far.
@Alyxandri - cool! what day? i’m the 9th.
Ice cream! That’s a very special memory.
@positivelyunsure - the 5th
@YouTOme - My story makes YOU grateful? Oh my, for a little one to have undergone heart surgery and all that, what a strong person you are! It humbles me to think I ever thought I had problems. Others have have borne so much greater weights than my own. Life is good!
@Tiger11007 - Oh my gosh, that would be tough for a little girl! HUGS
Thanks but i can only imagine what all the foster care and starting all over must have been like for you :/
With all those ugly childhood memories still haunting me then, I felt that there wasnothing worth remembering.
I was 3 1/2, we pulled into our driveway, and our house was burning down. I’m not traumatized or anything, that just happens to be my first memory.
That seems quite wrong of them to have not let you figure out that stuff on your own. Did anyone get in trouble for that?
Random fact: a lot of the memories we have as very small children(as well as any other age, really) are incomplete, so our brain really fills in details. We do in fact remember things that never happened or were never true.
@lonelywanderer2 - Thank you. I didn’t understand why the other kids didn’t like me.
I was about two years old. I was outside trying to help my dad cut the grass with a toy mower that blew bubbles.
Next I was five, nearly six, watching my mom and stepdad getting married.
After that, there’s nothing until around age nine. Everything between nine to fifteen is spotty at best. I remember being constantly plagued by bullies, I remember my suicide attempts, and that’s about it.
It’s great you remember that. It’s good your grandmother taught you how to use a spoon. The things we take for granted.
An Irish bartender once asked me in his Cork, “What’s your first recollection as a child?” I thought for a moment then answered, “You know, I don’t remember.” He cracked up.. The thing was I was serious. I knew there was something I had remembered but couldn’t think of it at the moment. It was being in the kitchen with my mom, dancing to a song called “Hold that Tiger” by Les Paul and Mary Ford. I think I was probably 3 but 4 the latest because when I was 4 we moved from Washington State to a new house in Minnesota. I actually have a few memories from Washington. I can’t really say which happened first sequentially.
@chronic_masticator - Sorry for the hard times you had, but glad you cane through to be the amazing person you are!!! @TheSutraDude - Dancing with your mother is not a bad first memory to have at all.
I really liked reading this. This is the sort of thing that interests me about people. But it made me morose to read that your foster parents never taught you very much.
I remember calculating how I could step on my brother’s hand while also making it look like an accident. He was lying on the ground watching TV. I don’t remember why I wanted to do it. I was two.
@lonelywanderer2 - True. Neither is ice cream!
@lonelywanderer2 - <3
My parents were sitting on the balcony of their first apartment in Germany. It overlooked a park. I was playing inside, and I guess they called me, it was snowing. It was the first time I ever saw snow, I thought the stars were falling. I was 2.
Hm, this is a neat first memory.
@Erika_Steele - That’s a really cool first memory!!! @wyrdkismet - Thanks!!! Glad you enjoyed reading about it.
Interesting for sure. I was also adopted, but at birth. My earliest memories also go back to the ages of three or four. They include running around the telephone oasis in our kitchen and my dad pretending to dial zero to report a tornado in the kitchen, a red and white checkered tablecloth on the kitchen table, Dad’s guns in his bedroom closet, in that same closet a battery operated Charlie Weaver doll that would mix a drink between two tumblers and then drink it. The doll’s nose would then turn red and smoke would come out of its ears. My parents threatened me with it a few times when I misbehaved (gee thanks Dr. Spock), but when they realized how much it terrified me, they stopped.
This is a great question, because I was just enjoying an early childhood memory a few minutes before logging on. Here’s one that might just explain how it is that I’m still alive after all I’ve done – Dad praying over me and later me and my adopted sister both after we’d said our bed time prayers, and asking God to send guardian angels to keep watch over us.
I love you Dad. I still miss you, but we’ll be seeing each other again soon, and I can’t wait. I have so much to thank you for and so much to apologize for.
*sniffle* Thanks for this man.
I am so glad you wrote this post. It gives us a little peep into your personal life. Hugs to you.
At this point, I don’t know what are memories and what just feel like memories because I’ve always had access to pictures and videos of myself as a toddler. Sometimes I just think that my mind is making up memories based on them.
Your first memories of your new family are sweet, despite your inability to use the spoon.
Those are sad memories — trapped within yourself. I hope that your later ones are happy.
My first memory that I am sure of is from about 14 months old. My grandad had come to visit and I was asked to go into my parents’ room (where I usually wasn’t allowed) to get him a pillow. I was immensely proud of that responsibility!
@Jenny_Wren - Interesting memory!!! I remember one time when my grandma sent us kids pencils which had been sharpened to a nice point. I used mine to stab my sister in the back. I thought it was very unfair that my mom took my pencil away. @AOK4WAY - Good memories!!! @ZSA_MD - Hugs back. I need to write personal stuff more often. @schmeeglee - I have “memories” that are really memories of stories heard, I’m sure. I also have a vivid memory of a time when I slept at a co-worker’s house, on the living room floor, because he lived closer to work and we had an early meeting. My memory is of him telling me it was time to wake up and get ready. He was surprised to see me already up and showered, and told me what really happened. His dog came out and saw me lying on the floor, and growled at me. @lanney - Wow; that is a really early memory; the experience obviously made quite an impression!!! I’ve lived a long time now, and have a long list of both happy and sad memories.
maybe when my mom was trying to feed me something i didn’t like but she did anyway and it was so hot and i just went wild.
@f5ye_angel5 - I hope your profile pic isn’t of you when that happened!
@lonelywanderer2 - lol no. i think i was 4.
@f5ye_angel5 - lol, okay, that makes more sense!!!
@f5ye_angel5 - When my son was about 2, I gave him a pickled jalapeno pepper slice and told him it was a pickle. Kinda cruel, I know, but I thought it was funny.
It’s a shame what some people do to children to further their own misguided interests. I’m glad you got out of that foster home and into a wonderful adopted family.
I remember being in my crib, crying. Because I wanted out. I think I was maybe 2? I also remember climbing out of the crib, and falling. I ALSO remember the pictures on the wall through the bars of my crib, and I remember smearing my diaper contents all over everything. I hope I was only 2, as the memories are quite clear and it’s kind of disturbing to me if my parents kept me in a crib for a longer period of time than 2 years.
@amyunicorn - lol, I remember one of my little foster brothers smearing his poop all over the wall. We called him “Tiger”. He later went back to live with his birth mother; we visited him at her house. He ended up setting fire to her house.