Your Earliest Memory

 

Your Earliest Memory?

• by Dixie Dawn Miller Goode on May 19, 2022

I have scattered childhood memories, a dog, an airedale, that we lived 
next to in Cheyenne that “guarded me from my parents in our front yard, 
until the owner came home. We moved from there when I was two. 
I remember going to the house I mainly grew up in in Cody, when 
it wasn’t our house yet, and playing with a boy and girl who lived there, 
and I remember a blue plastic pool filled with stuffed animals in the red 
house we rented in between Cheyenne and home owning in Cody. 
But those are brief and tied only to places or times I can use to anchor
 when the memory is from.
Do you ever remember, remembering something and yet, 
no longer remember the actual event?
 When I was very young, my grandfather’s brother, Clarence,
 was grilling chicken on a backyard BBQ grill and we smelled it 
as we arrived, and instead of going through the house as we usually did, 
I ran around to the side gate and entered the backyard 
with wet laundry billowing on the clothes line, and he turned
 from the Smokey grill and shouted, “it’s the birthday girl!”
Years later, watching my moms silent, black and white 8mm home movies,
 “You won’t remember my Uncle Clarence, because he died when you 
were too young.”
 I argued with her, describing all those details I just mentioned, while her
 little movie only showed him bringing a platter of chicken over
 to the table. But a couple years after that, I remembered watching
 the movie, and the words I had used to tell her about that early birthday, 
but I no longer actually remembered that backyard picnic,
 or that strong man who I knew was happy to see me.
Now my only memories of him are of the fast moving cancer. 
I remember riding along when Mom picked him up and drove him to Dr. appointments. I remember when he was too weak to shift his legs and he asked my Dad to cross his legs for him because he’d been in the same position too long and was hurting.

Thinking back, from this aged place of 58, to that early, probably about age three, birthday, and the people who always have surrounded me each year, with love and fun times and celebrating my birth. I realize that I’ve been so blessed. My family members here today, and those back then are all different people, but that thread of family that connects us, is a thread of love generations long.