The sun is slanting through the gaps in the blinds in great yellow sheets, so thick I am tempted to reach up my hand to see if the light has somehow turned solid. The faded trim along the ceiling glimmers as though it was painted hours rather than years before, and the stained wood of the bed, the dresser, the garage sale wardrobe, all glow as though made of pure gold. I am sitting in the circle of my mother’s crossed legs, my back against her stomach. In front of us she balances a book on her palm. She reads aloud from it, her rhythm never wavering. She swears that she stuttered and coughed, but I recall so clearly the ring of her even voice, creating a world from words I could not yet fathom from the strange inky squiggles patterning each page.
I don't remember what part of the book we had reached on that particular afternoon when the sun was so solid. My mother tells me so many stories from those long hours she spent reading to me, sometimes I forget what is memory and what is imagining, built from the familiarity of her mind rather than my own. Her favorite reminiscence, muddled with my own memory, is when I insisted one of the character’s name was pronounced Pee-yah, berating my mother as she read it wrong. My logic was this: the name was spelled P-e-a (in truth intended to be pronounced like the distasteful vegetable) and my name, which was one of the few written words I was familiar with, was spelled L-e-a (pronounced Lee-yah). I remember being very adamant that her name be spoken like my own, a reaction that has grown into folklore over the years, starting as a single demand for “the right” pronunciation and eventually twisting into a full and well-planned argument about the spelling and speaking of Pea and Lea somehow voiced by the warbled half-sentences of a three year old. Personally, it has become far too jumbled for specifics to be sorted, yet has done nothing to mar the perfect clarity of the bright sun and an imagined story dancing in front of my wondering eyes.
Even my serial re-reading of the novel over the years that followed has done little to warp that memory. Where some stories I’ve learned to experience differently with each different read, that first story just takes me back to that first time, a moment, a sensation, a way of thinking, of discovering, that was completely and utterly unique. All preserved in the pages of that battered old book, like a pressed flower perfectly preserved, hidden on a random page by a long forgotten hand.
When I open that book, sometimes even when I just think about it, I am granted one of those rare windows through time. I can feel the wonder I felt as a little girl, sitting in my mother’s lap. I can see the images of princesses and castles and very brave little mice dancing in my mind’s eye. I get that inexplicable feeling, that flavor, of that one moment of my life, sitting in the glow of the afternoon light.
There are bits that have faded, of course. I picture the floor as wood, as it is now. Only, back then it would have been tan carpet. I imagine my dog is somewhere in the house, but it was years before we brought him home. I can’t quite grasp the pattern of flowers on the old bedspread beside us, and I can’t quite remember the curve of the old lounge chair. But there’s always that feeling. That never changes, never fades.
It’s funny, there’s a line in the very book where there is the same sort of impossible experience when one character, a little mouse with unusually large ears, hears music for the first time and says, “it sounds like honey”. Honey, of course, has no sound. Yet I know exactly what he means. And he is so incredibly right. The sound of music, sweet, gentle, slow, so like the gentle drip of honey.
So for me, in that memory, the sun felt like laughter, pure and uninhibited. My mother’s voice sounded like warm blankets and good night kisses. And the story…that story sounded like fire. It sparked something in me, something inexplicable and unstoppable. Perhaps it was natural curiosity over the mystery of the page, driving me to spend my years discovering it’s secrets. Maybe it was the awe of something so beautiful built from just ink and paper and imagination. Maybe it was that inexplicable something that I felt then and have felt ever since, any time I remember that instant, that first flash of the light in my eyes. Maybe it was always in me, and it just took a good story to force it out.
Whatever the cause, whatever came first, the purpose or the book, the two are forever tied together within me. That book holds that first memory, which inspires that feeling that can only be described as sunlight, gently shimmering somewhere deep inside me. And that feeling, that beautiful warmth and reflection and imagination, has grown into my purpose, my drive, my life…me. It’s what makes my fingers itch to write. It’s what makes my lips twitch up in a private smile unnoticed by those around me. It’s what grows into whole worlds and lives inside my head, just waiting to get out. It’s at my very core, shining bright when I’m at my best.
It’s said by many that our first memories are such because they haunt us. That carries with it the suggestion that first memories are something we attempt to move beyond, something we wish to be rid of perhaps. And though that may be true for some, and though I have other memories that linger like shadows, untouchable even by my own personal sunlight, that first memory is nothing of the sort.
Though I suppose, perhaps, there could be a different interpretation….If I were to imagine a lost loved one, standing beside me again, smiling at me…that sort of haunting would be a miracle, and I imagine, would inspire that same sort of enigmatic spark within as that first memory of mine. And, I suppose, that memory is a sort of ghost. It is a mirage of a version of me that has long since ceased to exist, yet I carry it with me through every step of my life. But it is one I would never wish to be rid of. My ghost is my spark. What haunts me is what drives me. My first memory, so simple, so inconsequential, carries the discovery of inspiration; the light that leads me through life.
