What is your first memory?

my first conscious memory is very simple---it's seeing and feeling the sun shining on me, through a window, i think.  i would have been just an infant at the time, so it is very tenuous.

i also have very early memories of looking up at the sky from my pram, which my mother used to roll outside and park in the grass. i was afraid of large birds, or any shape or shadow that reminded me of one, for some years, because apparently (according to my mother) a vulture swooped down and took my pacifier and flew off with it. really weird, i know. it probably explains some of the odder aspects of my personality, eh? and it's a family trait, because my own daughter is occasionally visited by birds, generally crows. they will fly directly at her for no clear reason and one pulled her hair repeatedly. she has, um, mixed feelings about this; i have tried to smooth it over by telling her the birds have messages for her. and maybe they do...

i remember the cats we had. there was a siamese who didn't take crap from anyone, least of all a human brat. i loved the cats.

when i was a toddler, my father accidentally broke my ankle in a bicycle wheel, so i remember sitting on the floor in my funny cast. i remember that it hurt, and that i was frustrated by having to drag myself around instead of walking along the furniture.

i remember being read to in the afternoons. my poor mother was probably trying to keep me out of her hair or settle me for a nap (good luck), and i would have happily listened to stories until nightfall. that's how i learned to read, from looking at the words as she read to me. it was like magic when i looked at a word and realized that i knew what it meant. i think it was in "frog and toad", but it might have been one of the beatrix potter stories. anyway, i looked at it, said it aloud, and my mother was very pleased.  for a while they thought i was repeating the stories from memory, which i am sure was part of the learning process, but one day they realized i was reading.

i recall certain toys---i had a little toy airplane with people to put in it that could be pulled along by a string. i liked the globe so much that they let me have it in my room. i would sit for long periods gently spinning it and looking at the land and water. after i could read, i would read the names of all the places aloud to myself and try to imagine what they were like.

i remember the first days of kindergarten---complete terror and mystification on my part. the teacher showed us how to draw a snowman by drawing three graduated circles just barely touching (head, a bigger one for the middle, a bigger yet for his base) and then putting in a dot face. i thought that looked really stupid and drew a proper snowman, with his sections melding together as they should and a carrot nose and twig arms. she took my drawing and put it in the bin, and told me to copy the one from the board like everyone else. i think that may have been the point at which i ceased extending automatic respect to adults. i wonder if i ended up majoring in art just to prove to her that i could draw!