Bloganuary – Day 3

What is the earliest memory you have?

I’ve never had any trouble with my personal timeline.

Like the Latin/Roman alphabet with its letters stretching out from A at the leftmost position and Z in the far right, so too is my memory with everything I’ve already done or experienced stretching out behind me (to the left) on a clearly defined linear string.

Huge signposts are markers along that string that can focus my attention on key dates guiding me towards important things that happened – both where and when.

Stretching out before me (to the right) is a slightly fuzzy line with smaller signposts already marking planned events that are yet to pass, but with their days, dates and locations already highlighted all the same.

All these signposts help me identify and recall all the substantial artifacts in my life. Moving house, leaving school and getting a job, losing a job, falling in love, getting married, having children, all the bones I’ve broken, when I was unwell, accidents I’ve been in, times of great joy, and others of great sadness.

They are all there, residing on my life’s timeline, all marked with their own signpost.

And it’s those signposts that help me remember all sorts of things, things my mother always told me I was too young to remember.

Like falling from the trailer in my grandparent’s front yard and breaking both wrists. I was a little older than three at the time.

Sitting on the front steps of my grandparents home waiting for my father to return with my mother and new baby brother. I was a couple of months short of my third birthday that day.

And the day this photo was taken.

–⋅ o ♥ o ⋅–

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