Baby’s First Memory? Clambering into her slatted Junior Bed (a step up from the Crib in sophisticated styling) and sucking on a sugar cube (one of two), a customary treat courtesy of staff at The Torch of Acropolis, a Greek restaurant her parents frequented.
But when – and how? – did she assign the designation First Memory to a mental event, an association of sugar cube and Junior Bed? She was four years old, perhaps, or five (no more) when the scene reconstituted itself unbidden on her mental stage with such force that she said to herself, “That is My Earliest Memory,” then wondered, “Did I know how to talk then?” and asked herself, “Where has that Memory lived until now?” (She was a precocious and introspective child, inclined to converse with herself.)
Then she considered how it came to pass that she recalled the source of the sugar cube – The Torch of Acropolis, its waiters. Surely her memory of The Torch sprang from a later time – or might it have been an earlier?
And so she formed the habit of lying awake at night and contemplating the past.
