Memoir Prompt #2

#2: What is your earliest memory?

First there’s light - warm, baking sunlight.

Then there’s water, and it’s cool against my skin and the surface sparkles all around me.

I discover my feet under this shimmering surface, and as it shifts and wiggles and waves, my feet look like they don’t belong to me anymore. I wiggle my toes and I feel the greasy silt filter between them.

Somehow I know it’s my first taste of freedom; of mobility; of agency. I look at the ripples where the surface of the lake meets the beams supporting the dock to my right and I’m transfixed.

The water splashes behind me and I realize someone has come out to meet me - my father lifts me gently out of the water and I can see it bead up and drip off of my pale toes to fall back into the lake as he brings me back to the shore. It’s just three steps for him, but it felt so far when I was out on my own.

He sits me on his lap and I’m laughing about the whole ridiculous thing. What is this stuff? How did we get here? Why is this silly white daisy print sun hat on my head?

There’s a brighter flash to my right and I look in its direction. My mother has snapped a photo and I don’t understand what the camera is or why she’s on the dock staying dry when there’s this amazing lake to splash around in.

But I do know that I am me and I like this lake and I like the way the water and the silt and the summer sun feel.

Maybe I only remember this because I’ve seen the photo. Maybe I reconstructed a memory that didn’t actually exist before I knew it should be there. The sense memory of it seems so real to me that it basically doesn’t matter, and I have to wonder if this is why I love being near the water - I’m seeking that freedom and that joy and that one crystal clear moment of realization: I am me. This is who I am.