Early Memories

“When you are older you will understand how precious little things, seemingly of no value in themselves,

can be loved and prized above all price when they convey the love and thoughtfulness of a good heart.”

- Edwin Booth -

Wouldn't it be amazing if we could remember things all the way back to our infant years? Imagine the stories we’d have to tell. But those stories cannot be told, at least for now, because we all suffer from infantile amnesia; the inability to retrieve memories from our early childhood, particularly before the age of three. There are many hypothetical reasons for this, one of them being that the growth of new brains cells during those years overwrites existing cells, which in turn erases the early memories. Yadda yadda yadda...

The things we do, and the way we make people feel outlast our mortality.
My father is no longer with us, but the heartfelt memories he left behind live on.

That being said, I do have a handful of memories that go way, way back. One of them is the letters I used to write to my dad when I was about three or four. On loose leaf paper, I’d scribble rows and rows of squiggly lines, seemingly writing sentences like my older brother who was in school did, and hand them to my father to read. He would thank me, pretend he was reading , and tell me how great my stories were. Not once did he ever dismiss my "writing", or tell me that it was just gibberish, which it clearly was. He was special like that. And perhaps this memory has been retained because it conveyed the love and thoughtfulness of his good heart.

What's the earliest memory you have from childhood?