Wed, Feb 6
... Before I knew time
It was my second birthday. To my tiny eyes, the room seemed huge; made even bigger by the mirrored wall at the far end of the room. The kitchen table was leaned up against that mirror, and my birthday cake was on it.
Every night, my mom would put me to sleep by planting a garden on my back. I'd lay on my stomach, and she would, first of all, "rake" the garden by scratching my back. Then she'd make rows to plant the seeds in, and then she'd plant the different rows of the seeds I wanted. At age two, I always wanted flowers, candy canes, and chocolates. The rows would be "covered up," and then the sun and rain (back rubbing and drumming fingers) would help them grow. At the end, she'd make the seeds grow by pulling on the fabric of my nightshirt, and then make me giggle by gently pinching my back to "pick" them. All the while, she'd be explaining the whole process to me soothingly, in that gentle "mom-voice" designed to lull her children to sleep. Even as I grew older, I still wanted gardens; even until I was about 9 or 10 years old, on the nights when I couldn't sleep.
So, on my second birthday, my cake was a garden, complete with candy canes, Hershey's Kisses, and those pastel mint flowers that always used to sit in the center of Grandma's table. I don't remember much else, except that the table seemed awfully high, and a bunch of my stuffed animals were sitting on the table as decorations.
I have several snapshots from that time period... mental images that I can't place chronologically, that all happened before my sister was born, before we moved out of the condo we lived in while I was little.
Besides the birthday party, I have one less vivid picture of me, standing in my crib, calling for my mom. The room seemed huge (although my mom tells me now that it was pretty tiny--maybe the fact that it was dark made it seem bigger). I wasn't scared, and I wasn't crying, I was just calling for her, and every time I'd call "Mooooooom," I tried to make a bubble with my spit and see how long I could keep it over my mouth without it breaking.
I remember being upstairs one day with my dad, standing in the hallway, wearing crocheted rainbow slippers, with him holding me over his head and twirling me around. My mom was standing nearby, and I thought I was so high up, so far up... even though he's only 5'2".
And I remember one day, sitting in my high chair at the table, eating raisin bread or something similar, putting my feet up on my high chair tray, picking the raisins out of the bread--both things I knew full well I was "not allowed" to do--while the adults were in the kitchen, trying to get my little bare feet down before they came into the room.
It's funny, though; I don't have any vivid memories of my mom being pregnant with my sister, who was born just before I turned three. I don't have any vivid memories of being told that I would have a new baby, like I do with my brother. I remember going to the hospital and holding her when she was born, I remember where I went when my mom was in the hospital with her, and I remember the days right after she came home, but I remember very little about beforehand.
It's funny what my brain deems important enough to remember; how much of what I live and how much of who I am has just "always been there," how I can't distinguish a beginning point to many of my memories, my relationships, my friendships, my experiences. They're just so much a part of me that they've "always been."
infinite || abyss
posted at 9:37 p.m.
