Earliest Memories

Prompts: early memories as a young child. The surrounding time and culture then. Family of origin.

Irene Paine,  January 14, 2022

Someone asked me, what is your earliest memory of being alive? Oh for Pete’s sakes, I am sure I had memories when I was two or three, but those are gone now…gone with what came after. Can I remember saying ga ga goo goo in my crib, lying on my back clutching my toes and staring at a mobile hung over my head? No. I do remember wooden crib bars. I remember jumping up and down holding on to those bars. But it is a kinetic memory, not a cerebral one. I remember what it felt like, how the mattress sounded when I jumped on it. I don’t remember what anyone looked like, or potty training, or much of anything. Oh yes, I liked bananas from a Gerber baby food jar.

And then along came my brother. I was no longer a baby, suddenly I was a “big girl” even though I was just barely running around outside on my own. How big are you at 2 years old?  I was good with him. I thought him more interesting than my dolls. I thought it funny when he peed at my mother while he was lying on his back having his stinky diaper changed. As he grew it turned out he had a squally temper. I was told to be a nice girl several times a day, and so I was a nice girl.

Was I afraid of anything? No. Not yet. I was warm, I was fed, I had things to play with and a mother to help by going to get things for her when her hands were full. I would shoo the cat out of Buddy’s crib. I would dangle things in front of him for him to grab at. I would look on solemnly when he threw his oatmeal all over the floor from his high chair, or put the whole bowl on his head like a hat.

It was curious to me that when he was two years old, he developed a way to deliver the news to our mother that he was very angry. We were taught not to scream and yell. No screaming and yelling. He couldn’t talk anyway. But he could control something, and that was his breath. If he didn’t want to do something, or, he wanted something he couldn’t have, he held his breath until he turned red. And he would vibrate his body like a fake shiver until his ears were shaking. With his cheeks puffed out, his eyes wide open, his face beet red and his ears a-quivering, he was a sight to behold, like Aladdin’s genie about to go up in smoke.

My mother would try to get him to take a breath by offering him something. A distraction. Maybe not what he wanted, but anything to get him to take in a gulp of air and not pass out. Distraction worked until he was three. Then things came to a head because he did it constantly and was never happy about having to wait for something. Or maybe he had been told that what he was doing was absolutely not okay. Something like pulling the cat’s tail or throwing wooden blocks across the room.  Like a little Houdini, he could hold his breath longer and longer and get redder and redder. One day in the kitchen as he stood vibrating on the linoleum floor and Mom’s distraction method had failed, she went to the sink and filled up a glass with cold water. She turned around and told Bud to take a breath. He wouldn’t, so she threw the cold water all over him.

He took a big breath. He did not cry. He had been about to pass out, and maybe this was just what he needed. Life went on. He stopped with the nonsense, and just in time, because by now our little sister Sarah was learning to walk at 18 months, and we needed to pay attention to her. By now she was talking. This was convenient for Bud, because he did not learn to talk until he was almost four. Sarah said everything for him, little translator that she was.

Our small family of three children, about to be four, lived in a big old house on Main Street in Pepperell, Massachusetts, so my mother could be close to her parents who ran a large chicken farm up on Hollis Street. We saw our young and peppy grandmother a lot. She brought us cupcakes and cookies. I was allowed to stay overnight at the farm because I was a good girl, and I minded. My brother was welcome to come with my parents, but never by himself. Too rambunctious. Nana had only two children, so she was amazed as Mom kept having them. How was my school teacher father ever going to support all of us?

We played on the floor a lot, lying on our stomachs, and moving our toys around in their imaginary worlds. Tractors and soldiers were the majority of toys, but there were also the lethal jackstones (horrible to step on barefoot) and the dominoes, not quite so objectionable. One day I was lying on the floor playing while my mother did dishes. My brother was standing on a kitchen chair above me, he was Superman today. And he flew right off the chair, but did not go as far as he intended. He landed on my arm. Nice girl or not, I screamed. And screamed.

Wide-eyed brother was dragged off by the ear by my father. Papa had jumped to the conclusion that Bud had jumped on my arm purposely. I was rushed to the car, and driven ten miles to the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Nashua, where my mother’s sister worked as a nurse. It was nighttime, and there was no wait in the emergency room. There were far fewer shootings and car accidents in the late 50’s.  I went right into the big, dark, scary X-ray machine room, my aunt with her winged cap trying to comfort me and calm me to be still for the X-ray.

My arm wasn’t broken, but the doctor said it was badly sprained. They wrenched my shoulder back into place. They put a sling on me, and told me to keep it on for a week at least.

When I got home, I hated Bud, convinced he had done it on purpose due to the actions of my parents. And Bud hated me because he had received a pretty hard spanking on his rear end for jumping on me. Bud stuck with Sarah, and I became the odd sister out for a few weeks. Just like that.