This first memory is from
when I was about three years old
remember
we were living in Texas, where I was born, and I found a cat on the
street with whom I fell immediately in love and it had a friend, I
tucked one cat under each arm and went to the back screen door asking
to be let in with my two new friends. There was some short dialogue
with my parents over whether I would be allowed to keep them (I was
not). I didn't want to come in the house if they could not come in
with me and I willing to leave home over it. But somehow they
convinced me to come in and leave the cats outside. I think that was
the first time that I remember expressing my own will.
remember the car trip
when we moved from Corpus Christi, Texas to California.
My dad, mom and I went by way of Mexico and I remember
tight little streets with buildings that seemed stacked
right beside the side of the road. I remember throwing up
from car sickness on that trip and I remember my mother
getting me out of the car on a deserted stretch of the
highway and teaching me to pee by the side of the road,
an idea that was so strange that somehow it was like
breaking the law.
y mother squatted down and peed and I
remember a sharp pungent odor. I peed too and I remember
watching the stream of bright yellow pee rolling down
that dusty earth. That same trip I also remember my
parents leaving me at someone's house. I remember walking
up to a screen door and it being dark and cool inside and
there being people there.
also remember another part of that trip, staying at some friends' house and the young girl there, a brunette with a
red dress lifting me to the edge of a fish pond to see
the big fish swimming under the water. (I can't tell you
the number of times in the years since then I have
dreamed about aquariums and watching fish swim in silent
clear waters. My mother saw me and the girl by the pond
and shouted out my name, running over to grab me from the
clutches of the startled girl who had no idea that in my
mother's mind she had come close to being the cause of my
death.
remember
we were living in Texas, where I was born, and I found a cat on the
street with whom I fell immediately in love and it had a friend, I
tucked one cat under each arm and went to the back screen door asking
to be let in with my two new friends. There was some short dialogue
with my parents over whether I would be allowed to keep them (I was
not). I didn't want to come in the house if they could not come in
with me and I willing to leave home over it. But somehow they
convinced me to come in and leave the cats outside. I think that was
the first time that I remember expressing my own will.
y mother squatted down and peed and I
remember a sharp pungent odor. I peed too and I remember
watching the stream of bright yellow pee rolling down
that dusty earth. That same trip I also remember my
parents leaving me at someone's house. I remember walking
up to a screen door and it being dark and cool inside and
there being people there.