Memories are strange, because there is no way to tell if they are real. The further you carve yourself into the canyon of your life's timeline, the harder it becomes to see the first indents you made at the very beginning. Indeed, no one is able to remember the unique forms that comprise the entrance. As you peer back through the distance, craning to get a peek at where you came from, the early memories become a mirage. They blend together, the edges edited so as to be endowed with greater continuity and sensibility.
Perhaps my earliest memories are not memories at all, but rather narratives constructed by my imagination, prompted by the old photographs I've seen of myself. Maybe these memories are nothing more than stories I made up about the girl in those pictures. Or, it could be that these earliest memories are erected in my imagination based on the accounts my parents have given me of what they remember. Regardless of whether they are real or not, they are important; they let me tell myself the story of my life.
The first memory I have is faded and blurred together with speculation, sitting in my mind in fragmented pieces that I can draw upon at will. I can use the small snapshots— fluorescent lights, tile floors, a slab of concrete the size of a desert, detested blue jeans—to put together a moving image. I know this image is not a memory, but I do actually believe those small fragments that make the moving image possible—that make it imaginable—surely are memories. This first memory happened 19 years ago, today. It was the day I became a sister.
I don't remember that morning. I don't remember even seeing my brother, but I do remember walking across a large parking lot (presumably at the hospital). It was windy, grey and largely empty. The pavement spanned out in front of me, daring me to get back in the car. I probably held my dad's hand, but I don't remember that either. Instead, I remember being extremely upset that he had forced me to wear blue jeans. I hated pants. Princesses didn't wear pants. They wore twirly-dresses. These things were important for first impressions.
I don't know if I actually thought much about the fact that this was going to be a very important first impression, but I do remember that despite the cold, I hated the fact that I was wearing pants. I don't remember walking into the hospital. I don't remember whether there was an automatic sliding door or whether we had to open it ourselves. I don't remember what I did, how I felt, or what I thought when I first saw my brother. I don’t know any of those details; all I know is that suddenly, Glenwood, Colorado wasn't just the place we went to get McDonald's or lollipops at the bank, anymore. It was the place we had gone to get my brother.
I've seen pictures—he had an unnaturally large head, so maybe I remember my blue jeans and not what my newborn brother looked like because I've suppressed that terrifying memory. Luckily though, he's had 19 years to get a little taller, a little more proportionate, and to grow some hair to cover up his massive cranium.
As inglorious as it is that my first memory is of a despised pair of blue jeans, it is quite alright with me that my memories start when he came into my life. After that parking lot and those blue jeans, my subsequent memories are a montage of us: in the backseat of an Isuzu Trooper, buckled in and slugging back 7-Eleven Slurpees, tucked into a stroller, brisk Colorado night air kissing our cheeks, naked on our porch, covered in brightly colored paint and standing next to preserved white easels.
I haven’t had room in my memory for such mundane things as blue jeans since he came around. I think memories start when you start becoming you, and I don’t think I really started becoming me until I had him. Before that, I was just a kid who hated pants, looking for someone to make my first memories with.
