The day of my birth

Though the assertion hits you smack between the eyes, incites your mirth, provokes your incredulity, yet shall I still maintain until the day of my death that I can remember the day of my birth.

Frankly the memory is not as vivid as it once was. Equally frankly the memory was never a memory of the event of birth itself, but only a memory of the consciousness of that event, a purely sensory imprint as it were on soul or flesh of the distinct shock coincidental with the experience of being born. (This is from Abbott's book, Being Little in Cambridge When everyone Else Was Big, 1936, page 1).

"I remember it perfectly! I was all curled up in my paws like a rabbit! It got sort of crowded! . . . And then something whanged me in the cheek!" I shouted. "Get up—Get up—get up and get born," it whanged, "or else you never will get born! And there was a rainbow that exploded!” (page 5).

Posted By: Eleanor Hallowell
Author, Cambridge, England