My first memory ever, the first thing I remember is lying in my pram. I looked up and saw the sky and I also saw blankets. My feet were bound, I was uncomfortable and I couldn't really move. I cried, I was frustrated. It was as if I had hopped fully formed into the body of this baby.
My mother had wrapped me in blankets to keep me snug, and she had put the cover over the top of the pram so I couldn't see much, I was in the driveway of my home in Worlebury Close, Weston-super-Mare, it was 1958 or maybe 1959. My mother put me outside so I could get some air.
Can you imagine waking up and being unable to move, wrapped so tightly with just a glimpse of sky to comfort you? I know it is unusual to remember this far back and to remember what I saw and how I felt, but it is the truth.
I was thinking about this the other day and I question whether our personalities are already formed when we are born. I was not a baby; I was a person trapped in a swaddle of blankets in a pram! I know that my memory is the sensation of how I felt and that I added the words to explain what I saw, my emotions and my later knowledge of where my mother had left me in the pram. It is still an interesting idea. You could say that our souls come fully formed and we just inhabit our bodies for a while and this was the arrival of my awareness of place and time.
I used to think that I could remember before I was born, my father used to say that I was floating down the river on a lilypad but I think that I got that from Thumbelina, my first bedtime story.
Thumbelina is at least a nice magical memory, better than swaddling!
