What are your very earliest memories

The youngest memory I have is being held by my mother and I remember the smells. My mother would smell like breast and milk and soft and mellow. The I remember my dad holding me and he smelled like pollen and dirt and sweat. The difference was overwhelming to me and I think I acted up at times when my dad held because of the strong smells and the rough texture of his clothes. I do not know how old I was at that time.
 

Remember being a baby in an old sedan. I was wrapped in a blanket in my mother's arms. She was in the passenger seat. My Dad was driving, wearing a hat.
My Aunt Lois was in the back seat behind my Mother and my older brother was sitting in the back behind my Dad.
It was night and we were driving away from Belmont Amusement park. I couldn't stand up yet. I didn't want to leave the pretty lights
of the roller coaster. I remember kicking my feet and arms and crying. (probably about 6 months old)
My Mother didn't know what to do with me, so my Aunt said, "I'll take her!" I was passed to the back in the blanket and my Aunt rolled down the window and held me up at an angle so I could see the pretty lights. I was so happy! This is so vivid!
The next memory, I was playing in the hallway with my brother, with metal cars and trucks. I could sit up by then. He hit me hard with a red toy truck and I cried. Mother came running out of the kitchen. She had an apron on and a poof hairdo. She was so beautiful! She picked me up and rocked me until I stopped crying.
I also remember my Mother listening to and singing along with the Big Bands on the radio when I was a baby. I would sit on the floor and watch her.
 
I have a few memories from when I was around three, I can relate the memories to that time because we moved when I was three and the memories are at our old apartment.

One was of a fireman asking if a toy was mine, and it was. He pulled it from a burned up car in our parking lot. I have no idea if I started the fire.

Another is when the woman in the apartment next door came home after having her leg amputated. My mom was helping her and it literally made me sick seeing her stump.

I remember falling off the fire escape, and I remember riding in a police car looking for our building (I wandered away and got lost).
 
I remember being around 3, in a hospital crib, with a big glass bottle hanging overhead. It took me years to figure out it was an IV bottle. I was born without valves in my ureters, and when I was 10, I had surgery to correct it.

When I was 4, I let the neighbor girl cut my hair. I remember that because my mother got so, so angry. I was used to obeying my mother, and I guess I obeyed the neighbor girl.

That's it for memories before age 5.
 
My earliest memory is of sitting in a hard wooden chair at the age of four on a rainy day, and eating a baloney sandwich as I watched a black-and-white cartoon about a tiger. I think that all of my senses were engaged by the events and conditions described, which served to anchor the experience in memory…
 
I wasn't walking yet, just crawling. My mother would put me out in the yard on a blanket and tell the dog (a fighting hound that my father brought back from Japan with him) to "guard".

If I crawled off the blanket, he'd lay on me and bark until my mother came out. He was totally devoted to me and wouldn't leave my side.

I vividly remember that dog on top of me, barking up a storm. I can remember his smell and his hot breath.
 
WheatenLover said:
I remember being around 3, in a hospital crib, with a big glass bottle hanging overhead. It took me years to figure out it was an IV bottle. I was born without valves in my ureters, and when I was 10, I had surgery to correct it.

When I was 4, I let the neighbor girl cut my hair. I remember that because my mother got so, so angry. I was used to obeying my mother, and I guess I obeyed the neighbor girl.

That's it for memories before age 5.
Click to expand...
Maybe we all have hair stories. I remember setting up a beauty parlor with a couple of friends when I was a little girl. One girl ran to her house to get some hairspray and, without knowing, we ended up finishing off our hairdos with spray starch.
 
My earliest memory was when I was around 4 years old.
My family was rather poor. We lived in a run-down apartment somewhere in downtown L.A. I loved it because it came with its own pets - rats.
I'd sit on the floor in the dining room & share my lunch with 4 rats that sat in my lap & let me pet them. They showed up every day at the same time.
In fact, I told my mom "Let's never move from here; I love this place."
She'd say, "What do you mean; this is a dump."
When I told her about my "pets," her eyes got huge & she said "You're CRAZY!" :ROFLMAO:
 
hollydolly said:
I remember reading a 'so called expert' who said no child has a memory before 3 years old.. and I thought.. what absolute rot. Not only did I remember the above at 14 months but I was abducted ( kidnapped).. in the street outside our house when I was 2 years old..

My mother let us out to play, alone.. I know, I know.. but I distinctly remember the woman coming along on a pushbike with a basket on the front. I cannot for the life of me see her face in my minds eye.now or even back then.. but at 2 I probably was not yet able to make a description.., but whatever she said to me I let her pick me up and put me in the basket.. and that's the last I remember of the whole thing.

According to my parents what happened next was there was every police officer out looking for this 2 year old toddler, and they got a call from a Bus driver at midnight, who'd found what he thought was a bundle of rags lying in the middle of the main road and he'd just missed running over it..it was me..I'd been drugged and left to be killed by traffic in the pitch dark..

they never found the woman...
Click to expand...
You are right, the expert was wrong. There was a time it was thought people had to have a certain amount of language skills to remember something, but slowly they are coming to realize that while language is needed to share one's memories, to describe them, that for some, perhaps many of us the memories themselves have been recorded in our minds by the sensory input: sight, sound, smell, tactile and sometimes taste. They linger waiting for the words.

Language can make a huge difference in how we feel about the memory--- and how we feel can be influenced by how parents, older siblings and peers react to our recounting the memory, and by what they say to us about it. There is a therapeutic tool called 'reframing', which some people do naturally as they mature.

Reframing usually involves an emotionally hurtful memory of something a someone said or did, often when we were too young to conceive of or understand their motives--we only know how it made us feel. Then as we grow learn the whys of their behavior-- trying to protect us, or just repeating how they were raised, or acting from emotional wounds from their own past that are still raw and open.

To be clear, having been abused or even 'just' hurt does not excuse hurting another (except in case of hitting back physically if being assaulted) but it can explain it and to some extent reframe it as growing out of their pain not how they feel about us. That can sometimes help us let go of how we feel about what they said/did.

This does not mean we need to give them more opportunities to repeat the harm, It just helps us heal our pain, calm our anger & bitterness (which can cause havoc in our lives).
 
Last edited:
I was probably about the same age as hollydolly-18-24 months or so. I was in my crib, and I could hear squirrels running around on the roof. I can remember my dad was doing something in the cellar and left the door open. I started to crawl down the stairs. I remember seeing the floor beams, and a light bulb with a chain. My mom screamed and got me. I can remember being carried down from the second floor, and I remember the layout of the rooms in the house. We didn't live there very long, which dates those memories, Now, ask me where's my glasses or the remote...........................
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top