What is your earliest memory?  What is that first thing you can recall that graces the cover page of the mental history of your life?

With each passing day, passing year, passing decade, etc. we continue to add page after page of experiences and memories into our minds.  But if you go back far enough, through your library of life, there has to be that first thing.  That first thing that marks the beginning of your time.

I’ll share with you mine.

I was about 2 or 3 years old.  My family lived in New Jersey in an apartment complex.  We lived on the first floor in a small one bedroom and our sliding porch door opened up into a field of rolling green grass speckled with yellow dandelions.  It was about 5 pm and the sun was beginning to set.  I was playing outside with a group of kids.  It was warm so I think it was spring or summer.  We were all running around giggling, roving in a pack playing tag.  Most of the kids were 5 or 6 years old so I was definitely one of the runts.  The group of us encountered a chain link fence.  It was a typical fence made of rusty metal that you’d find outlining the border of any american, elementary school.  It was about 5 feet high but for me, it seemed like a castle wall.  All the kids started to hop over it because on the other side there was a park.  Now if you’re 5 years old, a chain link fence does not pose much of a barrier.  You just stick your toes in the wire diamonds, shinny up the thing, throw your leg over, and jump down to the other side.  But when you’re 2 or 3 years old, it’s a physical concept that you most likely have never encountered.  I remember standing there watching all the other kids scamper easily up and over the fence.  I was in awe because it was the first time I have ever seen “fence climbing” done.  I was a virgin in that respect (and in many other respects).  I watched as the last kid hopped over.  I was the only one left on the other side.  I just stood there, alone, looking at the kids having so much fun on the playground.  I wanted to get me some fun too.  What to do, what to do?

Before I knew it, I ran towards the fence and started to do what I thought the older kids did to get to the other side.  Because it was my first time climbing a fence, the sensation was just plain strange (kinda like putting on a condom for the very first time).  I had no muscle memory so I didn’t know how to alternate my hands and feet to most effectively get to the top.  I remember being so high off the ground that when I looked down, it felt like I was hanging off the 8th floor balcony of a high rise (I’m sure it was only 2 feet, though).  Somehow, I managed to get to the top.  Yeah, I’m on top!  Never have I been perched so high in the air.  It was awesome!  Then, just as fast as the euphoria of the vista hit me, the instinct of fear shot through my body like a bolt of electricity.  Shit!  My eyes just bugged and my body seized.  I started to hyperventilate and was trying to say “help” in ten different ways simultaneously, but it just came out as some sort of pathetic, animal squeak.  Going up the fence was one thing.  But once atop, I found out the hard way that I didn’t know how to balance myself by having one leg on each side of the fence.  I had no idea what to do.  Even worse, I had no idea that I had no idea what to do.  That’s when everything went into slow motion.  I started to tip back towards the side I just came from, my head falling dangerously close to the top bar.  Everything started to go straight down.  Then, my left eyelid got caught on a twist of metal that held together the links at the top of the fence.  It was like a little, metal Y.  That Y  hooked underneath my left eyelid barely grazing the whites of my left eyeball and started to head up towards my brow bone.  From any perspective, I’m sure it looked like my eyeball was about to become the meat at the tip of a metal yaktori stick.  Flash forward into real time.  My head snapped back hard as the rest of my body tumbled down onto the earth.  I remember seeing a flash of white light and the sound of my body thunking onto the earth.  Then everything went black.

The next thing I remember is a bouncing sky.  Actually it was me bouncing because I was being carried by 6 or 7 of the older kids.  A few were hanging onto my arms, one or two to my legs, and I think one was beneath me giving me some sort of a reverse piggy back.  I was looking straight towards the heavens, moaning at the intermittent cadence of the group’s stride.  ”Hurry Up!  I think his mom is home.  Do you know where he lives?  Did you see his face?  It’s so gross!  Is he dead?”  At least that’s what I think the big kids were saying.  I couldn’t be too sure cause I was in too much of a daze.  My head was throbbing and I didn’t even know where I was.  I felt a really warm sensation around my left eye.  Then I realized something…I could only see out my right eye.  My left eye just felt wet, hot, and non-functional.  I tried to reach up to do a touch and feel but my hands were being held in place by my makeshift paramedic friends.  We reached the back porch of my apartment.

Knock, knock, knock.

“OH MY GOD!  MY ROGER!!!”  (insert Chinese accented english here cause it’s my mamma)

I remember my mom scooping me up and cradling me with the love that only a mother could.  She held me so tight that I could barely breath.  She spun around and ran me straight into the kitchen.  I don’t think she even thanked my rescuers.  She grabbed a towel, ran it underneath the faucet, and took the wet cloth straight to my eye.  She was freaking out in Chinese asking me all sorts of questions.  It was a combination of her telling me that she loved me and berating me for being born so stupid.  She dabbed and wiped the area around my eyeball.  I whimpered and moaned like a dying hamster.

“Can you see?  Can you see?”  My mother repeated the same question in Chinese too as she pulled the now bloody towel away from my face.

At first I couldn’t tell since the I was still woozy from the whole fence falling thing.  But then, strange, blurry images started to come to.  It was like opening up your eyes under bloody water.  After a few more loving dabs from my mothers towel, the blurriness started to fade and I could almost see clearly.  Somehow my left eyeball survived the fence gouging incident.  My dad walked by to see what all the commotion was about.  When my mom explained what she thought happened, my dad inspected my face and eyeball wound, grunted, said I’d be fine, and casually went to the garage.  Thanks pop.  For a doctor, that was one hell of a laissez-faire diagnosis.

After everything calmed down, my mom cleaned up my face, changed me out of my bloody play clothes, and spent the later part of an hour trying to sooth and comfort me.  My mom was bouncing me on her knee and trying to make me laugh.  I was in a surly mood, still convinced that perhaps my left eyeball was hanging out of it’s socket.  To confirm that I was not an asian cyclops, my mom pulled out a hand mirror.  We held it together and I marveled at my crying, sweaty self.  The only thing that hinted at a wound was a small cut at the edge of my eyelid.  It was still bleeding a little but the gusher it once was was no longer.  I blinked and a trickle of blood dripped away from my eye and down my cheek (I looked like a crying vampire from True Blood).  It was the first time I had seen blood and the first time I had seen my own blood.  I started to get scared and I blurted out in Chinese, “It looks like soy sauce.”  I was about to fold into a crying fit when my mom started rolling in laughter, bouncing me even more furiously on her knee.  Apparently she found my soy sauce comment very funny.  From the reflection in my hand mirror, I saw my mom laughing and smiling at me.  She gave me a huge, mamma bear hug that quickly melted away my fear and need to cry.  I started to laugh and cracked a smile and kept repeating that my blood looked like soy sauce.  And there we sat there for a long time, son entangled within the love and safety of his mother’s arms, laughing as the the sun set on that warm and most memorable day.

That was my first memory.  It was a memory of love and not feeling alone.

What’s yours?