Not a sound from the pavement
Dec. 16th, 2011 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaThis week's stack of library books included Arthur & George. On the train in to work this morning, the first chapter introduced me to both the gentlemen.
One of the things which came up in George's description is that he doesn't have a particular memory that he regards as "his first memory", and had never considered that he ought, or that it was normal, to have such a thing.
I have never been aware of having an earliest memory. I have very, very vague memories of visiting my Nana, who died when I was 3. They are so vague that I wouldn't even really call them memories, more impressions - and even then, I can't be totally sure that they haven't been formed from me being told about her when I was older.
I do wonder that one of my difficulties in pin-pointing an earliest memory is lack of reference points. People often say that they remember being in such-and-such a house, and they know that the family moved from that house when they were two. Or they remember a holiday their parents took them on at a certain age.
We didn't move house when I was a child, and our family holidays were (and still are!) always in the same place. Obviously there were trips to particular places that would come with a date attached, but whenever the mother says "do you remember..." the answer is usually "no", unless it happened much later in life.
I have the fixed points of the deaths of my Nana, and also of my Grandad (when I was 6). I have reasonably clear memories of Grandad, so I certainly have memories from before the age of 6 1/2. Most other things which can be pinned to a time - playgroup, starting school etc belong in the vague-impression category. Perhaps when people talk about their earliest memories, they also are relating only a vague sense of an event rather than what I might now call a memory of something.
Do you have an earliest memory? If so, how old were you when it was formed? How can you be sure it's the earliest?
One of the things which came up in George's description is that he doesn't have a particular memory that he regards as "his first memory", and had never considered that he ought, or that it was normal, to have such a thing.
I have never been aware of having an earliest memory. I have very, very vague memories of visiting my Nana, who died when I was 3. They are so vague that I wouldn't even really call them memories, more impressions - and even then, I can't be totally sure that they haven't been formed from me being told about her when I was older.
I do wonder that one of my difficulties in pin-pointing an earliest memory is lack of reference points. People often say that they remember being in such-and-such a house, and they know that the family moved from that house when they were two. Or they remember a holiday their parents took them on at a certain age.
We didn't move house when I was a child, and our family holidays were (and still are!) always in the same place. Obviously there were trips to particular places that would come with a date attached, but whenever the mother says "do you remember..." the answer is usually "no", unless it happened much later in life.
I have the fixed points of the deaths of my Nana, and also of my Grandad (when I was 6). I have reasonably clear memories of Grandad, so I certainly have memories from before the age of 6 1/2. Most other things which can be pinned to a time - playgroup, starting school etc belong in the vague-impression category. Perhaps when people talk about their earliest memories, they also are relating only a vague sense of an event rather than what I might now call a memory of something.
Do you have an earliest memory? If so, how old were you when it was formed? How can you be sure it's the earliest?
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Date: 2011-12-16 05:34 pm (UTC)I clearly remember my brother being born, when I was two-and-a-bit. Or rather, I remember him showing up as a newborn when Mummy came home from hospital - in those days they didn't let children in hospitals, even to visit. (I have stronger and clearer memories from a few years later when my brothers were in hospital and my mum went to visit them - each time, I had to sit on a chair in the corridor outside the ward and read quietly, because the strict rule was that children other than patients were not allowed on the ward. And paid-for childcare hardly existed at the time, assuming we could've found the money for it. I didn't mind that much at the time: they were special new really interesting books. (Smart mother management there.) But in retrospect, that's absolutely bloody awful, and I feel desperately for my poor mother having to juggle the three of us like that.