My earliest memory…home…trust…men

I initially wrote this two years ago. I shared it with one friend only…why her? I don’t know but I do know I had decided then to finally write… I told her I was writing my story. I asked her if she was interested. She was. I was glad but not enough to keep writing then.

I’m doing it now.

I cannot write my story in one long stretch though, mine has to come out in bits and chunks, like the phlegm from the bottom of my lungs after a big hit. 

1-9-17 – edited and added to 1/6/19

When I’m asked to conjure my earliest memory, not one I was told about but an actual memory I have, I tend to reply with one from my childhood in which I can explain my actions in reference to the other circumstances surrounding it, but that wouldn’t be a true answer. That wasn’t my first memory. So as I sit here quietly remembering … retracing paths through smoky rooms, peeking through dirty windows in my mind, and listening to the quiet house sounds for anything familiar, something tangible … and then there I am.

There I am in a basement. Not my childhood home basement, but Nana’s basement. I remember it was her basement because it was then and there, in that moment when I received the one thing that I would find some form of comfort from. Comfort that I didn’t know or understand that I so desperately needed. I was old enough to walk but too young to write. I was old enough to know who in my family circle thought I was special and who didn’t.  If I were to guess my age that day, I would say I was three years old.

Nana, my father’s mother, had many talents and she deserves much credit for my ability to create art today. Though I never had the opportunity to learn how to sew from her, she created for me my most treasured possession, a blanket. It was silky smooth on one side and soft and cuddly on the other. It was known from that day until it became a shred of itself as my covey blankey. It was what I slept with every night and what I carried around with me everywhere every day. It definitely had white but it could have also had pink and blue, maybe even a pattern. None of the decorative details of the blanket came flooding back, all I have now is the feeling, both the feel of the blanket and the way I felt receiving it. My covey blankey even inspired an idea for a children’s book I intend to write one day.

If I concentrate now and try to connect with my little self then and look around all I notice is this doorway to a room which she has me wait outside of. I see her emerge with this blanket and she’s giving it to me, telling me she made it special for me and it’s the best one she’s made. It feels like a secret that it’s the best and that it is mine. I don’t remember anything else about her house, her husband, her dog, our visits, nothing. This is my earliest memory and my only memory of Nana’s house; interesting that my memory begins in a basement.

I’ll elaborate on this house because as I grew in body I also grew to understand its influence on my core values. This house formed my early understanding of what I perceived men value most. Interestingly, even after all these years, I still have the same conclusion…men value wealth and money more than love and friendship. Anyway, this house was a Spanish style house with porticos on the porch, tiled roof and floors, etc. Nana absolutely loved her house; it was her pride and joy. She grew up a poor and terribly abused child during the Depression, so her house really was everything to her. Her husband (my grandfather) of 20+ years (?) forged her name on a second mortgage, took the money and moved to California. The only ‘home’ I remember her ever living in was a one bedroom apartment on the other side of the tracks, we could walk to her old house from there….if she wanted to. She never wanted to. I never asked to. Funny (eerie funny, not ha-ha funny) how after all these years I was able to Google her house and found it after trying to retrace the route from memory, all while looking at an onscreen map.

I have lived my whole life never feeling attached to a house. The only house I knew as a child was the one I lived in when my parents were married. It was infested with cockroaches and the memories I have of living in it are not happy ones. In fact, I cannot recall any happy memories *in* that house. I remember being told I was happy on a Christmas morning getting barrettes and putting them all in my hair at once but I do not own this memory, it was created for me by my father. If it really happened I can’t recall it. There are many instances of this in my childhood by the way but I digress.

The only other house I’ve ever lived in was the one I bought with my husband and I have never let myself get attached to it or love it. I like it well enough. I am definitely NOT house proud…never was and I wonder if I ever will be? To me, it seems unnatural to attach myself so deeply to inanimate objects, even if they hold memories.

Nothing lasts forever, right?

Metallica – Wherever I May Roam