This week's writing prompt for the #52weekblog challenge is My Earliest Memory
I’m honestly not sure what my earliest memory is, since I have a few from around the same time frame. When I was two, my dad received orders to Greece and we lived in Athens for four years. I don’t remember a lot, but I have snatches of memories from when we lived there.
☆ Watching my father string up big, fat Christmas lights on the wall in the shape of a tree because we didn’t have a tree (no fake trees – it was the late 70s).
☆ My sister “leaving” me at the park because I refused to go home and talking to this very nice older couple (she’d gone around the corner and could still see me, but I didn’t know that then).
☆ Riding my white scooter in footie pajamas and burning my leg with hot chocolate because I refused to get off the scooter, even though my mother told me to get off the scooter. (No, I’m not stubborn at all. Why do you ask?)
☆ Climbing up to the Acropolis. I swear I remember this. I was holding my dad's hand & I remember wondering why he wan't carrying me. Now, as a parent, I totally understand why he wasn't carrying me!
☆ Smelling pine needles that my dad crushed.
☆ Eating warm, fresh kataifi dripping with syrup (mmm….). Funny side story: when we moved back to the States & I saw the big shredded wheat for the first time, I was so excited they sold kataifi by the BOX in the U.S.! Yeah. No. Such a letdown.
☆ One of my most vivid memories is the time my sister cut her hand on the glass door to our balcony. See…what happened was she was supposed to be watching me and my younger brother (she would have been 11 or 12 at the time). We colored on the balcony floor with crayons and my mom made her clean it up (because she hadn’t been watching us like she was supposed to have been). My sister’s best friend thought it would be funny to lock her out on the balcony. My sister did NOT think this was funny and was already mad about having to clean up after me and my brother, so she started banging on the glass door. SMASH. She put her hand through the glass. Here’s the part that’s most vivid: my sister’s friend having to put my sister’s shoes on for her because of the huge cut on her hand. The shoes were blue with white stripes. She was sitting on the wood coffee table trying to untie the laces, but blood was soaking through the towel wrapped around her hand and she couldn’t curl her fingers in. My sister has NO memory of that part. She remembers being mad and putting her hand through the glass, but not the part about not being able to put on her shoes. Thankfully, there was no major damage and it stitched up very nicely.
What is your earliest memory? Click here to read what other authors remember.
