Kids:

My earliest memory, I think: I am posed like a doll upon my painted wooden toy box to be dressed, and then I’m riding with my parents, standing between them on the bench seat of their Chrysler, to drop Dad off at a Jolly Roger restaurant for his commute. I was around two years old. I also remember waiting in shame for my father to come home for lunch – I’d failed to use the toilet and Mom made me wear my soiled underpants – but since I understand I reverted in toilet training after my brother was born, I had to be at least three then. I think I remember real fear of the front loading washer, but maybe I recall my parents’ stories about that instead. I have a good memory, but I was the first-born of camera-crazy people, and I’m sure I confuse my impressions with theirs and with the slides I’ve seen so many times.

The toy box/Jolly Roger memory is mine; they don’t remember it. And hurt and shame memories are unphotographed and my own. Like the loaded underpants. Or the time when five-year-old I sat on the red hassock watching TV and my two-year-old brother bit me on the back. I date our eleven year sibling war from then. No one but me remembers when my mother caught me masturbating behind the couch in the livingroom (I was about five for that too), so I call it a true memory…

And though others were involved, I own the memory of my barbaric tonsillectomy. I was five and a half for that, and I understand the surgery was necessary because I was chronically ill with colds and swollen adenoids; my hearing was threatened. They also tell me the doctors advised my parents not to talk to me about the operation before it was performed. I find this hard to believe, but my parents are intelligent and honest, so I accept it.

We drove to the hospital and sat in a waiting area. A nurse-type woman came and took me away from my parents and into an elevator. She leaned forward and braced her hands on her knees, a posture I’ve hated at least since then. She asked “How are you today, MaryAnn?” I don’t recall what I said, but I was dismayed that she got my name wrong. I remember thinking she was stupid, phony, and ill-informed.

She brought me to an L-shaped room and disappeared from my life. The place was narrow where I entered it, with a pair of bunk beds on the right wall, and it opened up at the end to a light area with windows and a circular table covered with coloring books, and chairs holding two boys about my age. I wasn’t allowed to sit and color; instead I was laid across the bottom bunk, my pants were pulled down, and without warning or explanation I was given a shot in the butt. It happened too fast for me to protest, but I remember feeling outrage about the shot and humiliation about the boys.

Next they put me in a wheelchair. I didn’t mind the ride, but too soon the chair stopped and was backed against a corridor wall by a door. The person who had been pushing put a paper in my hand and said to stay in the chair and watch the man who was lying on the wheeled bed across the hall. This man appeared to be sleeping on his back, covered to the neck with a white sheet.