Remembering

I thought I would practice remembering. I have many fuzzy spots in my childhood memories.  Perhaps the earliest thing I can genuinely remember was when I was about 4 or 5 years old.  At the time, I was an only child.  We lived in a two bedroom apartment called Lisa Ann Apartment Complex.  It was not near my grandparents, and sometimes they would send me packages.  Most of my days I spent playing freely in the apartment complex buildings with a girl named Kelly, who was a year or two younger than me, and two boys whose names I do not now know.  Kelly and I got into many adventures, especially when the boys were involved.  I remember making mud pies and running around hiding and playing make-believe.

Kelly had a pac-man telephone.  It was bright yellow, and I did not have a phone of my own.  I thought hers was so fascinating.  One day we decided to disconnect it, and subsequently reconnect it in what I remember to be my parents bedroom, with their fluffy comforter and big bed.  Maybe I didn’t have a place to plug it in in mine.  We just randomly dialed numbers and giggled in secret.  My mom was furious when she found us.  It sounded like a man speaking another language speaking on the line when she found us dialing.  I do not have vivid memories of that punishment, but I just know that it, like all the other punishments, was full of anger and a spanking.

My mom must have punished me, but I remember it more as a “Wait until your dad gets home” type of thing.  I have few memories of him in that apartment.  The two I remember are of getting punished and belt whipped for sucking my thumb and him bringing me a book home.  My home was a scary place at times, and I needed that thumb to comfort me.  I learned to suck it in secret.  When he brought the book home, it was a rare and special occurrence, and I was surprised by it.  It was a Berenstain Bears book, and I was so proud of it.

One night apparently I was sick and my mom gave me some Tylenol in a metal spoon and left it on the nightstand by my bed with a paper towel for it to rest on.  The nightstand was an old wooden antique with a lamp and my stuffed puppy dog on it.  It feels like I may have had a clock there too.  The Tylenol tasted sweet, and I reached over, opened the bottle, and drank more while accidentally dripping it on my puppy, where my mommy found evidence of this.  She must have fretted, but I only remember that I had done something very bad.

In the recesses of my mind there is yet another incident, this time involving a barrette.  In those days barrettes generally had plastic tops and metal bottoms that clipped to the plastic.   {I just googled it to find a picture for you, but I could find no picture of these on the internet.  I am surprised that I am so old I cannot find a photo of the barrettes I wore as a child on here.}  I don’t know why, perhaps because I knew I shouldn’t, I took that metal end and stuck it in a plug.  I think I mainly wanted to know why I shouldn’t it and what would happen if I did.  The plastic end saved my life of course.  And I successfully knocked  the power out to not only our apartment, but the whole complex.  Yes, I must have gotten into a lot of trouble.

We did not go to church at the time, but I remember going once and thinking it was a neat place.  I don’t remember praying or even reading bible stories when I was that age.  The earliest I recall about faith is my granny singing over me as she bathed me.  I was small, but it would not have been often because we didn’t live nearby.  She sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “All the Children of the World.”  She stooped over me in the tub and dried me off when I got out.  I remember sitting in her arms.  This is something I don’t recollect about my own mother and bathing.  Every doctor’s office I ever visited had a doctor’s office bible story book in it.  I always gravitated toward it, and it had story pictures and words I could not understand, but I loved to look at the pictures.  I wondered over Noah’s ark and his animals and why the men looked so funny.  I wanted to know more.  I was captivated by what could be in that book.  My own bible was plain black with only red and black letters and an occasional picture.  The doctor’s office story book seemed so much more wonderful to thumb through.

What things are part of your earliest memories?