Earliest Memory by pandorasecho

Earliest Memory

My first memory, it is more a blend of sensations than a memory. I remember something that must have happened over and over, and that I watched repeated with my brothers and my children so that those memories blended with and reinforced my own older memories. I remember my Dad, young, loud and bearded – with hair I could grab fistfuls of when he lifted me in the air overhead. I remember that he loved playing with babies and I remember the specific sensation of giggling until I was gasping for breath and my stomach hurt and still begging for more as he made faces and blew raspberries and bounced me on his knee. I remember him holding both my hands over my head as I toddled and then a few years later I remember gripping his fists and walking up his legs and doing a skin-the-cat through my arms. I remember holding myself stiff as a board while I lay at his feet on the floor, and he bent over with his hands under my shoulders and raised me to a stand without me ever bending in the middle, and that felt like a victory. The “planking” win – before “planking” was a thing. I remember him calling me “Charlie and pretending to steal my nose, and pretending to pop out his eyeball to clean it, and making his cheek pop with a quick jerk of his finger or his nose break by making the noise with his fingernails against his teeth. He knew a hundred ways to entertain a baby but I was never sure who taught him.
Dad was only 7 when his Mom died of kidney failure, and he was the next to the youngest of a dozen children, and his oldest sister had a couple of her own already but helped raise all the little-uns too. So I know there were a sister and brother-in-law and his Dad, all working hard and pinching pennies, and there were a lot of kids with the responsibility of even younger kids – but someone knew how to do it right and make the very smallest ones feel safe and loved and surrounded by laughter. And my Dad passed that on.
I remember that every little thing could be a toy, so if there was a piece of string he could cut it in two, tie a knot, sprinkle it with invisible, ground up horse-feathers (wiffle dust) from his pocket and unwrap it to prove it was uncut and the knot had vanished. He would grab a brown paper lunch bag and toss an invisible ball in the air but the bag would pop when he caught the ball in it. He would plunk me in an empty cardboard box and slide it back and forth between my mom and him in the long hallway, and I’d giggle as they played “monkey in the middle,” because I was the monkey and what they were catching. He had to know how to make toys of nothing because in his childhood, nothing is exactly how much extra they had to spend on toys.
I remember being loved.
This one actually is 500 words.Not as much as it sounded like really.
September 2nd, 2014  
Memories are the only thing we have sometimes. I like this shot
September 2nd, 2014  
Wonderful to have old photos like this
September 3rd, 2014  
What a fun piece. I love the photograph you chose... it's amazing what joy we can capture with them. This challenge has been fun for me, so thank you for creating it. Challenging, but totally worth it.
September 3rd, 2014  
I love the photo
September 3rd, 2014  
Beautiful vintage photo to go with the theme of the narrative! So moving! I thought of what I would write about my dad, and it made me want to cry!
September 3rd, 2014  
A lovely old photo:-)
September 3rd, 2014  
I think you get your creativity from your dad! Seems to me this could somehow turn into a book- perhaps the first one you write for adults?
September 7th, 2014  
wonderful memories of your father. glad to see these old photos.
September 8th, 2014  
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