Early days

[pjthompson]

I've been reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung's memoirs, and enjoying it a great deal. He's an odd old neurotic, but since I share some of his same neuroses, I feel a kinship to his particular brand of strange.

Last night I was reading a passage where he shared some of his earliest memories. Here are two that struck me particularly:

"One memory comes up which is perhaps the earliest of my life, and is indeed only a rather hazy impression. I am lying in a pram, in the shadow of a tree. It is a fine, warm summer day, the sky blue, and golden sunlight darting through green leaves. The hood of the pram has been left up. I have just awakened to the glorious beauty of the day, and have a sense of indescribable well-being. I see the sun glittering through the leaves and blossoms of the bushes. Everything is wholly wonderful, colorful, and splendid."

"Yet another image: I am restive, feverish, unable to sleep. My father carries me in his arms, paces up and down, singing his old student songs. I particularly remember one I was especially fond of and which always used to soothe me, 'Alles schweige, jeder neige . . .' The beginning went something like that. To this day I can remember my father's voice, signing over me in the stillness of the night."

I've shared my own earliest memories here. Anyone else feel like sharing theirs?

Comments

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I have very few memories from before I was 4 (which was my age in the icon pic). My earliest one is my mom checking on me in my crib, and me telling her that she needed to change my diaper. Mom says I started talking before I was 1, but her doctor didn't believe her.

I also remember when they brought my sister home for the first time. I was 2-1/2. I had wanted a brother. I said, "take her back." I remember this clearly, not just the stories about it. I remember her lying on the couch at my grandparents' house.

I remember going into my parents' room and pretending to milk the cows. I don't remember if this was before or after my sister came along, but it had to be around that time.

A lot of my early memories are in black-and-white, like the pictures were at that time.

[pjthompson]

Those are great memories. That very early memory of mine is in a kind of sepia tone, or black and white. Most of mine are in color.

And was there a cow statue in your parents' room or something?

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

No, but my grandparents had a farm, so I was familiar with cows. My parents' room was like going to the barn, I guess. :)

[pjthompson]

lol. I remember being fascinated by certain architectural quirks of the old house I grew up in. They always sparked my imagination in interesting ways.

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Alas, I don't have any that leap out at my as my earliest memories. I think, past a certain point (the second grade, maybe?) I don't trust my creative instincts to stay quiet and not make something up. :-/

[pjthompson]

I figure that if they're in your head, they're yours no matter what the source. ;-)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I remember a couple of images from my first birthday, sitting in my high chair and staring at the cardboard decoration above the carosel on top of my cake. I wanted to touch the cardboard but people were holding my hands and yammering at me. I remember the cake on the steel tray, and then bright pain--later I identified that with one of the neighbor kids popping a balloon in my face. (Which explained my childhood fear of balloons, and my lifelong hatred of loud noises.)

[pjthompson]

Ah! It's so amazing when we can get at the roots of things like that. So much of our very early days are lost.

[(Anonymous)]

I have some very early memories of using the bars in my baby bed to pull myself up to a stand. I'm not sure if this is a real memory or something I've imagined.

The second earliest memory is not really a memory. I visited Malaysia the second time when I was 13 and remembered the smells, even though I was just around 18 months old during my first visit.

One memory I am confident of, though, is from when I was 2-3 years old. We were in the kitchen, my mother was holding me and I kissed her. She admonished me, sternly saying that girls don't kiss each other. I remember feeling awful; unloved and upset because I'd done something b.a.d.

PS. Lizziebelle, both my husband and I were speaking before we turned 1 year old, so I definitely believe your mother. :)

[pjthompson]

Welcome, mysterious stranger. Some great memories there. They say smell is one of the most persistent memory cues, so I can definitely understand you recognizing the scent of place.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Whoops, the mysterious stranger is me. I don't know what happened there.

[pjthompson]

You're welcome either way. :-)

[helios137.livejournal.com]

Great post PJ.

My earliest memory was when I was first begining to understand the idea of communication with my parents. I recall being in a state of mind where I knew everything there was to know. It was before I fully grasped the idea of understanding the English language. I couldn't wait to communicate with my parents because they, and others, seemed to have forgotten a lot of things. But as I became more fluent in communicating in English, I began to lose what I would characterize as communication with the "place" that I was at before I was born. During this process I recall being dismayed as to how poor the English language was as a form of communication. It seemed so awkward a way to get one's ideas across. By the time that I was able to speak with my parents I had lost all of the "knowledge" that I onced possessed except for a sense of loss that remained with me. Very paradoxical.

[pjthompson]

Fascinating, though. I wonder if that's the place most of us are in before the world claims us completely?

I remember when I was very young, definitely less than five, maybe as young as three, playing in the front yard and I knew with absolutely certainty and conviction that if I jumped up in the air in the proper way (i.e., with the proper attitude) I could keep going up and up and up and only come back down when I felt like it. I "remember" with sharp clarity doing this and floating above the roof top of the house and watching my mother in the back yard. It's entirely possible this was just a leap of imagination, but it's also stuck with me with profound clarity all these years later.

[helios137.livejournal.com]

Yes, I believe so. I think we all are in that place before we become fully integrated with this world. Your own memory rings true as well. One might say that all of the miracles and magicial events in the world is merely the rememberance of what we are really capable of doing. It also reminds me of the quote in Richard Bach's "Illusions" - "Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours."

[pjthompson]

Since I had no sense of my body during that "memory" I've often wondered if it was an out of body experience.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful memory!

[pjthompson]

It's something I come back to over and over. Who knows if it "really" happened? Whatever that means.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think even of what happens in dreams as really happening... the experiences are real when we're in the dreams. It's just a reality that doesn't transfer to waking.

[pjthompson]

That's a good way of looking at it. The only "reality" we can truly perceive is the one between our ears. The consensus reality we walk through is something that we kind of take on faith.

I'm not saying reality isn't real. I am a fairly rational person, after all. :-) But all of us, ultimately, only exist inside our own heads and have to take everything else, including the people we love, on faith.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

--which means that faith is a wonderful thing, that helps knit reality together ♥

[pjthompson]

Indeed it is!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I smiled when I read what you said about materializing at four :-)

I feel wistful reading what you and the others write about memories from so long ago. I don't have any so far back, and my earliest memories are no longer live memories; they are memories of memories. I have remembered them into static-ness; they are like snapshots of memories.

One, from sometime around two or three years, is of looking out the doorway of the kitchen into the brightness of the outdoors, where there was a field of corn. This would have been a house my parents lived in, out in the country in upstate New York. We lived there until I was three-and-a-bit-years. I feel as if I have a memory of watching shadows on the walls from that house.

From when I was four or five or so, I have memories of my bedroom wallpaper, and of using a bright green cardigan as a cloak, and a dress with sunflowers around the waist, and of playing in a space between two fences.

[pjthompson]

Wow, those are cool though—so visual and full of bright color.

I know what you mean about the staticness. As time passes, that does tend to happen. I can't feel the coolness of the water anymore in my swimming memory, though once I was sure I did. I have to strain to remember the cool feel of the grass from when I was four. But it's still there, vaguely.