Day Fourteen - Your Earliest Memory

This is an interesting one. I've always held on to this memory because it is so perculiar, and even at the time I thought it so. If I was older at the time perhaps I would have mentioned it. I know I was only two years old at the time, I know this for a fine fact because I remember a later date when I had a cake at nursery school for my third birthday (It was a private nursery come day care for those who think two years old is a little extreme for starting nursery, since as I recall, my parents both worked full time and oftentimes both had night shift duties).

All it is, is of waking up one morning feeling a little confused. I could hear a familiar voice calling out my name, so I climbed down off my bed, toddled out onto the landing, and looked up at the window on the landing that was opposite my room. The sky was grey, and I could just about see the bare, leafless branches of tress lacing up against the sky (so it must have been winter, probably a couple of months before my birthday since that is in April). I could only just see these, however, as I was not yet tall enough even to stand at the height of the windowsill (an odd thought, since I'm now six foot tall!). I knocked tentatively on the door to my parent's room and looked inside. It was dark and red in there, because that was the colour of their curtains at the time. My mum was still in bed and when I asked her if it was her calling, she told me to go back to bed or play with my toys.

I suppose on first inspection there's nothing unusual about that memory and no reason I should have held onto it, but, and please don't think I'm crazy, but it was as if my life and the world around me and indeed the entire universe only came into being the few moments before I was risen by that voice calling my name.

I'm not so egotistical as to believe this is the case. For one, if this was true, why was that voice so familiar (though honestly, I couldn't tell you who it belonged to, and given it woke me up I'd probably had a dream...I've had dreams like that all my life so I don't see why it wouldn't have been) and why did I know my own name if not because I'd already had almost three years of my life being called that? How did I know it was my mum in the bedroom, and who my dad was...

But I can honestly say my mind was blank of any specific memories at that point. I was aware of this fact, but it didn't strike me as odd at all at the time.

Perhaps this is wrong, and because I can't remember anything before this point I've just projected this onto it. I do remember telling friends about it when I first started Primary School,  because I asked them if they could remember being born. Some, of course, claimed they could, but you know what kids are like. I found it terribly strange that I couldn't remember anything before that morning. It didn't strike me as strange that I couldn't remember every day since, of course nobody does, but I remember waking up with a blank mind and it became odder and odder to me the older I got, and I confided in a number of adults about it, from teachers to family friends. I don't think I ever told my parents for some reason. Eventually I got to the age where I could just shrug it off as me having projected that sensation onto a memory of waking up one morning after a dream.

Of course it could also perhaps be that this was around about the time I became truly self aware as a being and only just began to register events as memories. I don't know, I don't really know much about how the brain works.

Anyway, that's my earliest memory, and I know it is, as I said, because I've held onto it. It's nothing exciting, but given my age it's probably for the best that it isn't!