Very earliest memories

I saw Mum today. I won’t go into the wherefores, but between events we had a pleasant time talking over a bakery lunch in the Wittunga Botanic Gardens.

Writing this blog, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately upon early childhood memories, and we talked about that. It’s interesting how different people remember different sorts of things - I have a very verbal memory (many of my earliest memories are snippets of conversation), whereas Mum’s memories tend to be visual. We also talked about how it can be hard to tell which memories are true, and which are cobbled together by the mind after the fact. But Mum confirmed that my earliest “this feels faintly like a memory but I couldn’t swear by it” recollections are, at least, plausible.

Here are some of my very earliest memories in reverse chronological order.

When we were living in Scotland, we went on the ferry to Demark one holiday. I would have been three or four. My impression of Denmark consists of tiled pavements, people speaking a foreign language, and, of course, lego. But the most memorable incident happened on the ferry. I’d been told that we were going to the lego shop in Denmark, but hadn’t been told that there was a smaller lego shop on the ferry. So upon hearing that Mum had gone to “the lego shop“, I was rather stunned. My parents may have many talents, but I wasn’t willing to believe that Mum had walked on water and gone to Denmark and back ahead of the ferry, so the explanation made no sense to me. My puzzlement got sorted out sooner or later (she’d gone to a lego shop: never use a definite article unless you’re definite about it), but I just remember that sensation of “huh??”.

Going back even further in time, I have a memory that I am not sure is a real memory at all. It concerns the move from Bowling to Bishopbriggs, when I was two. The memory is that I didn’t want to move, and tried to grab on to the grandfather clock near the front door in order to avoid being pulled away. Mum confirms that there was indeed a grandfather clock near the front door, which makes the memory plausible.

My earliest possible-memory of all involves a catchphrase often said to me by a particular person. That person was an elderly woman in (or at least close to) the family, the catchphrase was the sentence, “Put your tongue between your teeth and say ‘th’”, and the memory is linked in my mind with an image of being pushed on an outdoor swing. In point of fact, my mother’s parents did stay with us during the first summer in Bowling (but I don’t have any memories whatsoever of my grandfather at the time), and Mum confirms that they did indeed use that sentence in the context of teaching me to speak correctly. (Update: my sister remembers Grandnan using the same sentence much later, when she was four and I was six, but my impression of it being recalled from much, much earlier is very strong.)