What is your earliest memory?

And what does it say about you?

A cartoon cliff in the Rocky Mountains / Meta AI

I’m not sure exactly what my earliest memory is, but there are two fleeting, fuzzy scenes in my head that are the frontrunners. The first is of my dad carrying me with one arm while climbing a boulder somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Due to my size (small) and age (3?) I recall this as basically free solo-ing El Capitan, but if really happened, it probably wasn’t intense or dangerous by any means. Who knows. Ask my dad.

The second involves my cousin and our moms—they’re talking and pushing along either a double stroller that a young me and even younger cousin are both sitting in, or a single stroller that I keep trying to take over even though I can walk. This also takes place in Colorado, and I’m also not 100 percent sure it happened. Who knows. Ask my mom.

I’ve been thinking about my earliest memory lately, which maybe has something to do with spending increasingly more time around babies, toddlers, and young children. I’m in my 30s, so lots of my friends are starting to have kids, and it also happens that my girlfriend has two older sisters with three young ones between them. The oldest is 6 and definitely has a relationship to long-term memory, but the other two are in prime toddler territory: one is creeping up on 3 and the other just turned 2. I wonder: has either of them developed that first memory yet? Probably not, but then again, research has shown that it’s possible for it to come around at the age of 2.5. So…who knows. Ask them in a few years.

To me, it’s kind of wild that this earliest memory basically represents your entrance into the world of awareness. Or maybe that’s not quite the right way to put it, because even babies are aware of their surroundings at a certain point. They just don’t form or retain memories, presumably because their hippocampus hasn’t developed enough yet—so they don’t really have a full awareness of themselves. They aren’t the protagonist of their own story. Not yet. As someone who stumbled into the (very Eastern) idea that the self is an illusion only somewhat recently, I am pretty invested in understanding just what the hell is going on here!

What does an earliest memory say about a person, whether it really happened or not? Well, from what little I actually do understand, it seems to say: this is when I, the self I take me to be, started. Sure, my parents conceived me, then birthed me, then cared for me as an infant and baby and early toddler. Then my dad carried me up a boulder or I tried to go for a ride in a stroller and the Victor as I know him in my head, well, he arrived. The consistent narrative of who I was, am, and will be—it began.

Something really interesting that I dug up while doing some light research on the topic of earliest memories was the concept of elaborative reminiscing. In a 2008 study of white (Pakeha) and indigenous (Māori) New Zealanders, it was discovered that Māori adults had earlier first memories than any other culture explored to that point, which could be in part due to their elaborative style of storytelling around shared past events. In short, this means asking a lot of the “who, what, when, why, how” questions to young children in order to create a vessel that they participate in filling. As an example, from ABC (the Australian one):

Mother: You and Daddy put the Christmas tree up together, and then you put on decorations! What decorations did you put on?

Child: Um… the Christmas balls!

Mother: That's right! Daddy bought Christmas balls and stars to hang on the tree. What colours were they?

Child: Red and gold.

Mother: Red and gold. Pretty red balls, and gold stars.

Child: And there was the paper circles too.

This is in contrast to less elaborative questions like “was the tree pretty?” and “what happened on Christmas eve?” to which you might get answers like “yeah” and “I don’t know.” It’s pretty cool to think that a slight tweak in storytelling technique as a parent could result in an earlier (perhaps stronger?) kickoff to a world of memory in a child. (A “wow, parents have a huge effect on their kids” statement to which parents probably read and say, duh.)

Anyway, back to my own earliest memories, and what they say about me. Well, I guess they suggest I like adventure, but I’m anxious? I like a cozy ride with family, but also want go for it on my own sometimes? Now that I’m reflecting on them and wondering what else happened slightly before then that I just didn’t retain, maybe that suggests I’m a little obsessed with trying to reach beyond my own head/narrative/life to see it in full? The truth is probably all of the above, and more that I’ll never be able to see fully.

Cc: Dad, Mom.

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