Childhood Memories

I've always been fascinated with one's first childhood memory.  My daughter says she doesn't remember anything before the age of 5.  Mostly her memories are unfortunately, of daycare centers and bratty kids.  She does have one special memory of our house in Carlsbad, CA.  She remembers her and I planting seeds in our garden, seedlings sprouting into graceful cosmos along the side of our house.  I remember that day as well.  Her in her tiny jeans, plastic pink garden clogs, and ball cap worn backward. She was 4.

For myself, my first childhood memories are of Japan.  Being adopted at the age of 3, seems like that was the magic age I started to store my memories.  Of running around the statue of the Giant Buddha at Kamakura, chasing my cousin Stevie.  Of being held in my father's arms afraid of the NOH Kabuki players in a street festival.  I remember their white painted faces and their vibrant costumes, swirls of red and white and black.  I remember visiting the Temple at Nikko, peering into the glass boxes that housed fat sumo wrestlers wrapped in snakes, frighten and awed at the same time.  I remember being passed from one person's lap to another at the base theater before the movie started, my mother keeping a careful eye on me.  I recall my mother's beloved Pomeranian she had to give away because it was jealous of me. That must have been hard for her, she loved animals so much.

On the voyage home to America, I threw up on the bunk after a particularly stormy night, it was my 5th birthday, I had pumpkin pie. I remembered the ship's dining hall tables had a raised rim around the edge so the cutlery wouldn't fall off.  It was on that ship I made friends with another girl who asked to borrow my paper dolls.  My precious paper dolls.  I took great care to make sure they were perfect and place just right in the holder.  My paper dolls came back crinkled and creased, heads bend, dresses wrinkled and torn.

Those are my first memories, rich in experience and texture.  They say that you have all your memories stored and that it is just a matter of recalling them.  I hope my daughter will be able to remember more of her childhood, at least more of her memories after we adopted her.  Hopefully hers will be rich with experience as mine were.