This is my first memory. A memory that I know is mine alone. A memory that there is no picture of, that my mother might have imparted unto me when looking through snapshots later in life.  The most vivid thing about it is a taste. It’s the taste of the leather drawstring from the hood of a corduroy coat. I think it’s from between three and four years old. It’s near the end of the evening and I’m standing on the top of the front step of the duplex we lived in, looking towards the woods. My older brother Jim is in the woods or down the street beyond the wooded lot.  He gets to go play, and from the age of the memory I’m too young to do that. It’s a wistful memory. The bitter tang of the leather in my mouth is in harmony with the feeling of unfairness that he’s out there, and I’m stuck on this bare concrete step. 

It’s not surprising that the memory is tied to a taste. Scientists know that smells and tastes are among the strongest of our memory triggers, being older, more primal senses, and wired deep into our brains. In literature, there’s a famous, often referenced passage by Marcel Proust, who’s main character is driven into a virtually unreadable, hundreds of pages long reverie of his childhood, when he nibbles a bite of a lemon cookie from his sickbed. By the by, I have read that book because I have a rule that whenever I come across a reference to a piece of classic literature in three different novels, I have to assume the universe is telling me to go read the original. That rule has largely been a nice life guideline, but sometimes, ouch!

There’s not a lot more to share in this one. It’s a pretty raw memory. I can’t ascribe a whole lot more intellectual depth to a fragment I had as a preschooler, without turning into a liar.