Your first memory is that the toy kitchenette smelled like summer dirt and latex. You don’t know if this is because you really remember that smell, or if it’s just the scent you associate with children’s toys after you volunteered at the pre-school, a place filled to the seams in plastic and latex.

You’ll remember this kitchenette only from this particular memory even though there are dozens of pictures of you with it. And even though you swear you remember it, you’ll never quite be sure if you remember that day because your mother always told you the story, or if it’s because you actually remember it.

You’ve been told that you and your sister would always tip over the kitchenette- a dented fridge, an oven with a plastic viewing window, and an uneven countertop- and then pretend the whole thing was a voyaging spaceship, which really is way more interesting than a kitchen could ever be, anyway.

You’ll then remember that you played this game next to the garage, in that place where Dad always tried to grow grass but never could. You’ll remember the feeling of that dusty soil caked into the wrinkles of your feet, under your fingernails, you always found it everywhere.

While you’re thinking of this, you’ll remember the strange sensation of being in a world who’s vantage point is so low to the ground. Remembering that your mother’s cargo shorts ended at her knees which were just about as tall as you were, you realize that you had to have been no older than four.

You’ll then remember the considerable effort it took your tiny limbs to climb over the plastic edge and into the oven, where you then played pretend, an outer space landscape blooming around you like your mother’s crocuses. You’ll remember stars bursting like fireflies, comets that bled silver and blue dust. You know these specific images are only made from nostalgia, bits and pieces of what you know and expect from tv or books filtering into your memories. They’ve mellowed this moment.

You see, memories will do that. They’ll either fray or they’ll mellow. This makes it hard to understand what really happens in our lives, in our memories. It’s hard to figure out what isn’t tampered with nostalgia or hindsight. When they fray, everything about those moments seems spoiled like old milk, rotten even if it used to be fresh. When they mellow, everything turns into a sort of creamsicle colored tint that blends all the good parts together and tucks the bad parts away. Neither is very good at preserving the truth.

You can’t remember if this moment has been frayed, if it really was this dramatic, but you do remember a sudden darkness falling in around you in that toy oven. At that moment your sister has climbed on top of the kitchenette and flung the oven door shut on top of you. This is the game she liked to play. Confined inside the oven, you’ll remember looking up through the filmy plastic viewing window just to see your sister’s pink shorts as she sat on the door and laughed, locking you inside.

You’ll remember crying as she laughed, your tears mixing through echoes against the plastic oven walls. You’ll now think that this is the first time in your life that you truly felt helpless: trapped in a toy oven with your sister on the door, laughing. You’ll want to think that this somehow reflects your sister now, and you’ll want to be mad at her for something so small and insignificant, but you’ll also realize that she was only five at the time, and that she had no real moral compass yet. And it was kind of funny.

You’ll wonder how this childhood memory looked through your sister’s eyes, through your mother’s. You’ll wonder if your sister remembers joy filling up her gut like bubbles in a bath, shaking with giggles on top of that oven door. You’ll wonder if your mother remembers exhaustion filling her limbs bone by bone, muscle by muscle. You’ll wonder if she sighed as she watched her two small children tip over a plastic kitchen and fight over the oven-cockpit. You’ll wonder if she thought: “Why do I even try?”

And you’ll wonder: Why is this your first memory? Why is this the beginning? There’s a million other moments that you know existed, a million and one days to choose from, and yet you first remember a toy kitchen, a spaceship, your sister’s laugh. You’ll feel it all so vividly if you set your mind to it: the way the hot plastic of the oven singed your skin, the pressure of your sister’s body against the oven window as you tried to get out. You will remember your mother’s stifled chuckle in the distance.

You’ll start to wonder why you don’t remember any more about that day with the toy kitchenette; you just remember being trapped, your sister’s laughter, and then everything cuts out. It cuts out much like when your foot gets caught on an electrical cord and pulls it from the socket, causing the lights to go out. It cuts out like that indefinable moment in between lying down and falling asleep. It cuts out like a sentence never finished, leaving you with bated breath as you wonder

And as you remember that day, that moment, your memories, you’ll wonder if you yourself are just a collection of moments misremembered. You’ll begin to see people this way, as unique solar systems of life, every day a new planet of memories orbits their minds. You wonder, too, if you could fly through each memory in a spaceship, your sister at your side and your mother watching over; and the cockpit, of course, made from a toy oven.