Memoir

Have you ever thought about that first perfectly-formed memory of your consciousness and at the seeming unimportance of such a moment upon the formation of your person and adult visions of meaning? How is it that something so meaningless to the adult realm of existence can have meant so much to one’s child self that it became the very beginning of one’s conscious existence? My beginning is defined in a memory so simply formulated and irrelevant that it boggles the mind to the answer the above questions and yet it must have held some very important relevance to my child self.  My father and I were at a local Clarkesville, Virginia Burger King and I was two years old realing in the wonder at being allowed my very first sip of soda. I remember the sticky feel of the red vinyl booth adjacent to a window that overlooked the crowed parking lot. My father had ordered a Wopper, large fries and Diet Coke. I remember very specifically how wonderful that very first sip of soda tasted; how it tingled my tongue teasing it with sensations I’d never before felt. I remember leaning over the beige plastic table and leaning into the very drink itself, drawing a loving chuckle from my tired father. He seemed impressed by my enthusiasm towards the meal and mentioned so aloud, “Well you certainly seem to be a hungry girl.” It’s there that my first memory ends…of the following visit to the hospital and the first sight of my new baby brother I have no real recollection other than that of what others have shared with me. The birth of my baby brother initiated the beginning of the consciousness that was to become the woman I am today and yet I have no memory of it other than the sharing of a meal at Burger King with my Daddy…the last real moment I was to have as an only child I suppose.
It wasn’t as though Andy’s arrival upon the scene was the destruction of my happily constructed childhood. I was still doted upon by two loving parents though at times the attention I received was significantly less than that to which I was accustomed due to Andy’s infant demands. I know that I loved him as well as they in those early days as there are plenty of photographs to illustrate: those with me holding him delicately under my mother’s guided supervision and those of me curled around my tiny brother as he slept upon the grey carpet of the living room floor. In any case, I still regarded him as some being that was only sharing the love of my parents with for a short while and refused to truly incorporate him into the memories of myself for the next year or so. For instance, I remember long walks around the neighborhood where my father would stall with me to gaze over the unkempt fields of empty housing lots and revel in the silence of a thousand grasshoppers and resounding cicadas. I remember him teaching me how to suck on the ends of wheat grass in such a manner that I caused my mother to call me her ‘little farmer’.  Of these walks with my father, I have no recollection of the baby Andy or my Mother who are sworn to both have come along often. To my conciosness, these walks were secrets maintained between my father and I and the occasional forced entry of our dog Boomer who hardly ever left either one of us unattended. It’s said that she used to be heard crashing through the woods towards our house upon the crunch of my father’s tires upon the gravel road leading homeward; wimpering  at the shame in being late to greet his arrival. Upon my birth, the same steadfast adoration and dominatingly protective nature continued in earnest. Boomer seemed to look upon me as a welcome addition to the family pack and as such I have few childhood memories in which she wasn’t present in some manner. These sunset walks with my father were treasures to me with each one distinctly different and exciting. It was during those quiet moments that my father would share with me the secrets of where bunny rabbits ate dinner and how the fox could be both our friend and our enemy. I learned to love the quiet of pre-dinner springs and falls through those walks and the wonderful droning of the thousands of creatures preparing for bed used to be a sound I associated with my father and our times together.