First memories: readers respond

Offering a traumatic first memory of my own, I asked you to send me yours. The response was overwhelming.Picture: iStock

Offering a traumatic first memory of my own, I asked you to send me yours (“The mind’s eye”, May 8-9). Not some photographic memory via an ancient Kodak, or some family anecdote or heirloom, but a genuine personal memory. The response was overwhelming in both quantity and quality. They arrived in their hundreds and are still coming weeks later.

A majority were views from playpen, pram, pusher and, surprisingly, potty.

Many were dramatic – octogenarians and nonagenarians remembering the Blitz in London – others simply indignant responses to the arrival of a rival baby brother or sister. Today, a sampling. Next weekend a double-page spread.

“I remember waking up with Dad and two of his mates singing, ‘Kiss me goodnight Sargent Major, tuck me in my little wooden bed’. I can still smell the musty odours of their thick uniforms, feel the coarseness of Dad’s as I hugged him.”

“Got my bare toes caught in the back spokes of a motorbike Dad rode to the South Mine in Broken Hill in 1969.”

“Standing in my cot in a semi-darkened room with the sun shining through venetian blinds.”

“My baby sister doing a poop in the bath. I was traumatised for life.”

“Riding high on my Dad’s shoulders in the echoing hallway of the Brisbane Children’s Hospital. I’d fallen two storeys and broken my leg.”

“Up in my father’s arms at a noisy Italian wedding in St Pat’s. Suddenly a trumpet blasted. I was terrified.”

“Pedalling my bright red shiny tricycle down a steep hill after I’d just had a sixpenny ice-cream – and hitting a pole half way down. Went headfirst into a dustbin.”

“Throwing my shoe at Dad because he was paying attention to my brother and not to me. He picked it up and threw it back.”

“Sitting with my siblings on a village wall – then running to meet my father who was walking up the road with the other miners, his face black with coal.”

“Tossing turnips at cows.”

“Voyaging through the Suez Canal – little boats alongside our ship. Passengers buying things. I got a clockwork mouse.”

“My Grandad chopped off a rooster’s head. A few minutes later it crowed.”

“Summer, Western District, running with my brothers and sisters in a paddock ablaze with daisies. Shouting, laughing with pure joy.” (Wendy Harmer)

“Rectangles and rhomboids of red and blue light from the sun shining through stained glass windows on to the polished wooden floor of a country hospital.”

“My baby sister desperately ill. Just weeks before she died. I sneak into the lounge room where she lay in a white wicker basket. My mother hurried me out. I was two.”

“Waking up, aged four, to see my Mum crying. ‘They shot the President.’”

“Drowning in a Ballarat pond. Saved by a stranger.”

“At three, watching my Dad and Grandpa pull a calf from a Jersey cow. With chains and a tractor.”

“My sister and my Nan arguing over who would give me my bottle.”

“I was three. A neighbour throws a party for her little boy. Memories of a fishpond with golden carp under a tree in a garden.”

Until next week…