Oct
29
50 Years of Memory
I have come to believe that it is not a good sign to be able to remember being two years old. I have learned that such memories are rare. My earliest memories stretch back fifty years, a half a century, to that point in time, in Albany, California, when I was but two years old.
The most memorable of these memories are a string of recollections that still exists inside me as a narrative, but they do not cohere. The one that is probably the earliest is the most positive: I am two years old, towheaded, and walking through the golden sunlight by balancing my way across the thin rail of space that is the back of a couch. I was always a climber and a balancer, even when very young. Even now, I can be thrown off balance by my strange maneuvers, but I can almost never fall.
The most memorable of these memories are a string of recollections that still exists inside me as a narrative, but they do not cohere. The one that is probably the earliest is the most positive: I am two years old, towheaded, and walking through the golden sunlight by balancing my way across the thin rail of space that is the back of a couch. I was always a climber and a balancer, even when very young. Even now, I can be thrown off balance by my strange maneuvers, but I can almost never fall.
