Early Memories & the Moon

 

My first image in this life is sitting on the bumper of my father's car and feeling the heat smart on the back of my legs. I look up at my father, at his charming smile, and the loving feeling of his arm around me, and his handsome face staring forward at the camera, Despite the heat from the car burning my legs, something tells me to endure the pain and let the picture be taken.

The next memory is looking down at mounds of hot, dry dirt. Adults are sitting around on lounge chairs, laughing and drinking. The smell of the earth brings on feelings of home – I'm no longer afraid – throwing handfuls above my head, making mud, absolutely recognising that this will be as good as it gets. Dirt is real; it has the smell, texture and is the core of everything – this is the first time of feeling that I belonged in this world and that it was okay to be here...living.

Scanning memory again, a blue carpet and tiny bits of white particles manifest across my line of vision. The carpet burns my knees. Finally, I hear my name being called out, and seeing a glass brought down to my level, I crawl towards it and take a sip. The drink tasted strange but delicious as I peer up into the glass at the white bubbles, smelling the bitterness of the liquid as it travels up my nose, a wonderful sensation.

No matter how hard I try to remember the little things between the darkness, it is much later, on an airplane, looking out the window at the woolly clouds and below, the perfectly straight lines and shades of the color green. There is no fear whatsoever, but a true excitement that we are actually among the blue and white, flying in the sky.

Memory turns to flashes now, except for the nightmares.

Attempting to re-create these terrible visions in sleep as a small child is difficult. Are they true recollections of dreams or something else?

We forget how lonely a small child's existence can be: left in the cot for most of the morning, hungry and waiting. My trick was to jump up and down like a trampolinest; this action would most certainly bring my mother to make my breakfast. The window was right next to my bed; thus, I could jump higher and higher, up and down, seeing the apartment building across the alleyway. I remember it being a queer sensation, a perception of “now you see it, now you don't.” At night, above the building hung a beautiful, glowing light. As I watched it turn whiter and move closer to me, this vision, this incredible orb, had to be mine for the taking. Why would this wonderful light disappear in the morning? Later, I was caught at my bouncing antics, and my little bed moved to the other side of the room to ensure my small body did not end up in the concrete three stories below.

It was only much later that it occurred to me that the moon could never be mine.