Sunday Scribblings: First Memory

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I remember standing on a footpath, looking down at my feet enclosed in little boots and legs warm inside thick tights. There were dead leaves blowing past along the ground. I reached up to take the hand of the adult next to me, and we walked off.

I remember Brother urging to me ride down a hill on his homemade billycart, and the way I fell off at the bottom, rolling in the dirt.

I remember playing at primary school with the great piles of pine needles which fell from the trees lining the back of the playground. We would pile them up into great walls, enormous fortresses, play houses - little towns of pine needles.

I remember playing with a teledex when I was told not to, and being slapped on the thigh by my uncle’s wife. Brother and I crouched under a tree and plotted revenge (although I can’t remember what).

I remember riding in the back of the ute, next to a drum of water, while Mum handwatered the young trees growing in the fledgling fruit orchard.

All these memories are from different ages. Other people seem to have quite neat chronological memories, beginning reminiscences with “When I was four years old”, but my own are quite scattered - little snippets from here and there. I believe my earliest memory is the first one, the memory of looking at my shoes, but I wonder if that has been enhanced or altered by looking at photos of myself as a small child, in little boots and tights. Perhaps originally it was simply a memory of dead leaves blowing along the pavement.

(for Sunday Scribblings)

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