First Childhood Memory
I am doing an online writing course. Here is a piece I wrote in response to recalling your first childhood memory…
She takes down the box of memories stored in the seldom accessed part of her brain; they are not categorised, but stored in a shoe box of Clarke’s Jack and Jill shoes that her mother favoured for her little feet. She sifts through to find her earliest memory. Is it the red tricycle, with its white seat and its steel “Triang” badge that said “Made in England,” with its smell of oil and rubber and its strong, white painted spokes? She puts that aside. Is it the blue swimming pool, the plastic square, with its poles and legs that folded to contain the water and joined the hose-pipe to create a summer of fun? The smell of grass and mud and the intrigue of the earthworms that somehow always ended up in the pool after a deluge on a summer afternoon. She decides it is not the tricycle and not the pool. She flips through the box, the dust motes of memories floating in the sunshine.
She lands on the dark blue dressing gown, thick winter dressing gown, that has little bumpy balls from being washed, that she rubs her fingers on when she is anxious. The large embroidered cat on its pocket, with its permanent smile, holds no vague consciousness of her anxiety as it smiles mutely at the world. She has worn the dressing gown a lot, she has had tonsillitis repeatedly and although she is only two, the doctors have said that they should remove them. Her parents mirror her anxiety, but smile like the cat on her pocket, to make sure that she does not see their worry. But she knows. She may only be two, but she feels as old as the sun and while she may struggle to articulate it, she knows. Her parents buy her a plastic “Doctor’s Set” to help her assimilate the hospital visit and procedure. She makes them read the packaging to her, even the part that says “Made in Taiwan.” The plastic stethoscope, the kidney bowl, the tweezers, scalpel and blunt nosed scissors join her in removing bear’s tonsils. “See Bear, its not so bad”. Her mother smiles the anxious smile and twirls her long brown hair as she always does when she is unsettled.
The hospital smells of disinfectant, sterile cleanliness. No mud and earthworms would survive in the huge, scrubbed building. She looks down at her slippers, with their silver thread that form patterns of tiny flowers, they are peaking out from beneath the blue dressing gown as she climbs the concrete steps into the hospital. “Why must I wear my pyjamas out?” she asks crossly. “Mmmh,” her mother answers “it will be alright.” She frowns, that is not the answer to the question. She likes the proper answers like “Made in Taiwan” answers that have stories behind them. But she has no time to tug her mother’s sleeve and ask for more as she is now standing looking into a desk. Just a blank piece of melamine, her mother leaning over the counter top, talking in whispers to a nurse and filling in forms. She is irritated. She wants to be picked up to see what is going on at the desk. Not be left to wonder.
The operating theatre is cold, it smells like a scientist’s chemistry experiment. There is a steel kidney bowl. A steel stethoscope. She says “Look, kidney bowl.” The nurse laughs. “How does she know?” she asks her mother. Her mother shrugs and smiles. They tell her to count to ten, that the needle wont hurt her. She screams hysterically, kicking and flaying in anger against the nurse and the doctor. Three people and her mother hold her down. She puts up a strong fight for such a little girl. The needle hits her vein. One, two…she is gone. She wakes up with her tonsils staring at her from a tiny glass bottle next to her bed, she wonders what the writing on the bottle says.
© Tanya @ Ordinary Poetry
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