Tap into your earliest memories.
Do you remember your infancy?
I have a long memory. It goes all the way back to my infancy. I have early memories because I have noticed them. I know others have done this, too. According to my research, I estimate up to 12% of the adults who live in Western cultures have these memories. Two of the four children in my masthead have them. All four remember this photo being taken.
Before we go any further, let me be clear about two things. The first is the hornet's nest of recovered memory. I’m not interested in them. At all.
Second, I am not interested in the scientific and cultural consensus that very early memories are inaccessible due to intrapsychic, social, or physiological reasons. The truth is, not much is known about how memory functions at any age. What is known is that many adults are surprised when other adults remember their infancy.
Early memories are not contrived, but arrive on their own
When reencountered, early memories feel as though they have been waiting to be noticed, lingering shyly off to the side somewhere.
In his article, "The Phenomenology of Forgetting" (1983), Stephen Tyman described my experience of remembering infancy very well. He said, "We know, when we recollect, that somehow we have rescued the remembered from the forgotten" (p. 50).
This website is dedicated to those memories.
I think my earliest memory is from when I was so young I couldn’t even roll over by myself. I remember lying on my back and looking up at my aunt, at least I think it was her. She was looking down at me with such joy. I remember her talking to me in that way people do when they talk to babies, a sort of ga-ga, high-pitched, happy talk and how good it made me feel. She seemed very glad to see me; she leaned in and kissed me on the nose.
—S. B.
Rural Finger Lakes, NY.