Menopause Matters Forum
General Discussion => This 'n' That => Topic started by: Ju Ju on July 16, 2016, 08:28:07 AM
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I was discussing this with my parents and they say I must have been about 18 months old when I described this memory.
I was standing in my cot as my grandparents came in to see me. My grandma held up my dressing gown singing 'dancy diddly dancy', while I pretended to pour water over the side of the cot. Apparently I was recovering from measles and had been quite ill. My grandparents rarely visited because of distance and poor transport available. No cars available in those days!
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Do you mind if I don't contribute to this thread as my psychotherapy involves a lot of early memories that I am still processing and it is not always a positive picture. I will enjoy reading other people's memories though :)
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:bighug:
Maybe eventually, like me, you will be able to filter out some good memories. I felt loved by my grandparents, so those memories of them are jewels.
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I remember being pushed up the road in my pram, in direction of home, by babysitter was trying to get me to go to sleep. It was dark out too. Must have been about 18 months or so. I used to wear the poor woman down, so I'm told, but she loved looking after my brother & I. My brother would be in bed long before me & he's 10 years older! ;D
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I don't have any …….. most are pushed back into the depths ……….
Interesting thread. Sometimes I don't know what is 'real' memory and what I remember because I was told so often or by looking at photos.
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I remember the flat we lived in and the tortoise toby I was about two , but my husband swears he can recall been born !
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It was my 2nd birthday. I was with my grandparents not my parents because my mum was in hospital with my brother who was 4 days old. The postman arrived with a parcel for me and i opened it. It was a little woven basket.
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Going to pre prep school at 3 with a Banana
Even though itvwas a private school know one had seen a banana
I was made to stand with my face against the wall for showing off. At 3!
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I had a vague memory of a man with fluffy white hair singing to me. My parents could never work out who he was, until the day someone sent them a tape of my grandfather preaching a message (he was a nonconformist minister) and I went into the room while they were listening to it and said 'that's the man who used to sing to me'. They were absolutely staggered as he died when I was about a year old, so they'd always assumed I would have no memory of him. It made a real impact on me, because I think we probably all have memories from this age, but don't realise we do - because unless someone dies when you are tiny, you don't know if your memory of them is from 1 year old, 2 year old or 3 year old.
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My twin sister and I were about three and were staying with our grandparents. They lived in a big, old house that came with our grandpa's work as a company secretary - it had a large front lawn, a pretty rose garden and a rather exciting vegetable garden ::). Granny had asked us to go into their veg. garden one day, pick lots of peas, put them in the collander and bring them in for her to cook. Oooh, those little green pods were enticing! I can remember wearing our winter coats, squatting down on our haunches, popping the pods open.........and instead of depositing the contents into the collander like the good little children we were(!), feeding our faces with them! And they were the most delicious peas I think I've ever eaten, without a doubt because we weren't supposed to! ;D
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Oh that's jogged a memory of between the age of 3 and 5 - Dad grew long rows of fresh peas and my friend and I hid amongst the rows, eating as many as we could. I remember hearing Mum calling us but se didn't respond. She told me years later than she was so worried that we had been snatched - this was in the 1960s with about 2 cars along the road every day ::)
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When I was three I had mumps and I saw fairies dancing around my sisters cot ;D funny I can still remember seeing them but my mum says it was because I had such a high temperature I was hallucinating :madeyes:
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Oh that's jogged a memory of between the age of 3 and 5 - Dad grew long rows of fresh peas and my friend and I hid amongst the rows, eating as many as we could. I remember hearing Mum calling us but se didn't respond. She told me years later than she was so worried that we had been snatched - this was in the 1960s with about 2 cars along the road every day ::)
I had a thing for unripe gooseberries and blackcurrants (still green ones) My parents could never work out why the bushes furthest from the house cropped so badly ;D
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The earliest memory I have is being out for a walk with my Dad on a Sunday morning and begging to go further so we didn't go home because my mother always started a big argument on a Sunday afternoon. I spent the whole walk back begging him to leave her. I think I was about 4.
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I remember my brother being born. I was only two. He was born at home in the front room and I wanted to go in to my Mum but wasnt allowed so I sat outside the door upset. When he was born, I was allowed to go in and give him a pair of bootees but I wouldnt hand them over and sat in the fireplace holding them. He was born on the "put u up" settee- do you remember those, ladies? Fabulous contraption that could be made into all sorts of playthings for us kids.
Ariadne xx
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What a lovely memory! Were you pleased to have a little brother or did you find him annoying. I know a lot of children that age would rather have a puppy!
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Some lovely memories and others not so good. It's interesting that some memories you can date, either by circumstances or surroundings.
Years back I had the chance to visit the house I lived in till I was 4. I was amazed how accurate my memories were of the layout and proportions of the house.
My relationship with my Mum was not wonderful, but it was not all bad. She was very caring when I was ill. I had asthma, which was poorly controlled with the medications available in the 50s and 60s. When I caught an infection, like a common cold, I would be very ill with breathing difficulties. ( I suspect modern day medication would have controlled it and if not, I would have been hospitalised. Not then. I don't think she realised dangerous it was.) Manys the night that she had to stay up with me. She used to tell me stories about when she was evacuated to Cornwall, which she loved as she was a city girl. She had never seen a cow before and got to learn how to milk by hand.
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Ju Ju I'd love to go back & see first house I ever lived in. Past by it on a few occasions.
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CLKD is right when she says it's hard to pick out what a real memories and what are 'implanted' from stories others have told!
I can definitely remember sleeping in a huge bed at a B&B on the way to a holiday (no idea where we were going - probably Cornwall if it involved breaking the journey) - my Mum put a chair by the bed to stop me falling out, and my baby brother slept in a 'bed' made of blankets on the floor. He was born in July, and it was a summer holiday, so he must have been tiny, and I will have been 2 or 3 (my birthday is August). I have a vague idea the B&B was run by a Mrs Cleverly!
But I KNOW my 'memory' of Plymouth Ho! is planted .... I have heard so many stories of my little brother trying to pick up the painted dots on the road that I have a mental picture of him, dressed in a turquoise knitted romper suit that he's wearing in a photo from the right time, floating around in a big empty nothing surrounded by painted spots! It's a big empty nothing as it's not a real memory, so I have no recollection of what Plymouth Ho! looks like!!
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I was taken on a holiday to Wales when I was about 2 or 3 with my parents and grandmother. I have absolutely no recollection of any aspect of this holiday at all which is odd because I have many quite strong memories, not necessarily goo ones, from this time of my life. I have wondered if I have blocked the holiday out for some reason but have no way of knowing
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I am sure I remember lying in my big pram and I am also sure I can feel the texture of the blanket.
I would probably be about 18 months.
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On that holiday I would have been about 2 and a half. When I was 3 my life as I knew it all changed and I was no longer a happy and carefree child. I still have photos of that holiday and as far as I can tell they are the last photos where I am smiling and laughing and happy so perhaps that got buried.
Sorry, this is meany to be your earliest memory, not non-memory. I guess my earliest memory, thinking about it, was of my aunt coming to collect me and take me on the train all the way to my Nan's house, a 4 hour train journey. I would have been just over three at the time. I remember the big steam train blowing smoke and I was wearing a green coat.
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Oh that brings back memories going to see my grandparents on the train and my grandpa taking me for a walk to see the trains and stand on the pedestrian bridge as the train went underneath. The steam would billow up around us.
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What a lovely memory! Were you pleased to have a little brother or did you find him annoying. I know a lot of children that age would rather have a puppy!
Im pretty sure I wasnt all that pleased on the day he was born but I loved him as we grew together. He is, I now know, undiagnosed autistic. My Mum always said he was but in the ignorance of youth I didnt believe her as I had an image in my mind of what autism was and he didnt fit it. Of course I now know no two autistic people are the same.
When we were little, I was the only one who could understand him as he talked "scribble" as my Mum used to say. 😁
Ariadne xx
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CLKD is right when she says it's hard to pick out what a real memories and what are 'implanted' from stories others have told!
I can definitely remember sleeping in a huge bed at a B&B on the way to a holiday (no idea where we were going - probably Cornwall if it involved breaking the journey) - my Mum put a chair by the bed to stop me falling out, and my baby brother slept in a 'bed' made of blankets on the floor. He was born in July, and it was a summer holiday, so he must have been tiny, and I will have been 2 or 3 (my birthday is August). I have a vague idea the B&B was run by a Mrs Cleverly!
But I KNOW my 'memory' of Plymouth Ho! is planted .... I have heard so many stories of my little brother trying to pick up the painted dots on the road that I have a mental picture of him, dressed in a turquoise knitted romper suit that he's wearing in a photo from the right time, floating around in a big empty nothing surrounded by painted spots! It's a big empty nothing as it's not a real memory, so I have no recollection of what Plymouth Ho! looks like!!
I think the problem is that a lot of our memories can be 'overwritten' by what other people tell us. For example, with my grandfather, I could hear him singing really clearly in my mind until my mum realised that that was the person I was talking about. She thought he had an awful singing voice, so after that, every time his name came up in conversation, she would say 'oh, my poor daughter was only a baby & she can remember him singing; poor thing, imagine being able to remember that' and then she would do an 'imitation' of him, singing in a really silly, croaky voice and mocking him. Now, when I think about him, all I can hear is her voice doing that stupid 'impersonation', which makes me really sad.
One thing I've found useful in working out whether I am remembering the event, or what other people have told me is to see if I can see myself in the event. So, I can remember playing with my ride-on toy donkey, and all I can see in the memory is the grass and the donkey's back and ears. But I have a 'memory' from the same time of a neighbour helping me build a tower with my wooden bricks and me knocking it over, and I can see me knocking it over. So that is obviously me remembering what I've been told (the poor man was an architect & used to build these amazing creations only to have them flattened by me!!!)