Momentoes and Memories

Last night, my mother told me she'd found a couple of things and was going to send them to me.  But she decided to ask me first.  "I didn't know how you'd feel about them," she explained.


One of those items is an envelope that contains a lock of my hair.  However, it's not just any lock of my hair:  It came from my very first haircut.  


The other item is a crochet bootie from a pair my great-grandmother, who died just before I turned seven, made for me. I remember the other bootie of the pair:  It was attached, along with a similar bootie for my brother Mike, to a frame around a photo of the two of us.  That photo was taken not long after Mike was born, which means I was about three and a half years old.  In that image, I am "holding" him in my arms:  In reality, he was propped on something and I wrapped my arms around him.


Funny, how I can remember that photo even if I haven't seen it in at least thirty years.  Even funnier is that I can remember, albeit dimly, posing--or, more precisely, being posed--for that photo.  That is certainly one of my earliest memories, if not my earliest. 


Today I was talking to my cousin--who was born a couple of months before I turned thirty--and, in the context of something entirely unrelated to this blog, he said that he could remember when he was two years old.  One memory of that time, he said, was when his mother--actually, my cousin; I refer to him as my cousin because, well, what do you call the child of a cousin?--took him to see The Little Mermaid.


She died when he was four years old; from then on he was brought up by my aunt and her sister.  But he still has vivid memories, which he's shared with me, of his mother.


I suppose that if I were to clear my mind, I could remember to when I was two years old, perhaps even earlier.  If I did, how would that change the way I see myself--or other people?


Anyway, my answer to my mother's question:  "Of course!"  Just as there's no denying who I am, there's no denying who I was.