Writing Exercise Submissions: Earliest Memory

I got one, awesome response to Sunday's writing exercise. This week's assignment was to write about a your earliest childhood memory, and to do so in first person, present tense.

Gails entry made me want to pick her up and hold her, myself. I'm glad for the resolution:

Posted by Gail

I am so scared to get up on that wooden box. I am just three years old after all. I see the other little girls giggling at me. I feel different because I am chubby. I love my long wavy hair and rosy cheeks and blue eyes and my Mommy always tells me how pretty I am. Still, I am scared to get measured for my dance costume - a grass skirt to sing a Hawaiian song while I do my tap dance.

The sewing lady called me over, "Gail, it's your turn, c'mon now".

I am chin down and eyes down as I scuff over to the wooden box. I get up on it and I feel sick to my tummy. I feel the tape measure go around my middle and she says "I will have to sew two grass skirts together for her - I don't have one large enough"

I hear all the girls laughing and tears fall down my face. I jump off the box and run outside the dance studio.

Miss Connie, my dance teacher, comes after me. She holds me until my Mommy comes for me. I feel so sad and hurt.

Then, at the recital, I get to do the last dance with Miss Connie on stage - she says I am the best and most beautiful dancer in the class. The other girls aren't laughing at me now.

My entry is from a time when I was fifteen months old. My father left home for a year when I was three months old. He had traveled around the world by himself, leaving my mother home with me, and my two older siblings who were nine and ten when he left. My earliest memory is of his homecoming:

Mommy moved my crib into the big kids’ room. Maybe she will move it back in her room when she’s done vacuuming. I stay on the couch when she vacuums. I even jumped on the couch and she doesn’t get mad cause she so ‘cited. My brother and sister are ‘cited, too. They say Daddy is coming home. I don’t know what that means but it makes me feel ‘cited too. I sing and it sounds good with the vacuum.

Mommy says don’t take my toys out now. The ‘partment’s all clean. I run up and down the long hall in my black shiny shoes. They make a good noise on the wood floor. Mommy is cooking food and I smell it. It makes me hungry be we can't eat til Daddy comes home. That's what she said. I sing a song about Daddy coming home. 

A man comes to the door.

He doesn’t ring the bell, he just comes in.

I stop singing. 

He’s very tall.

I stand behind Mommy.

Mommy hugs the man. My sister and brother hug him, too and Mommy wants me to hug him but I stay hidden behind her. I hang tight to her leg, and look at my shiny shoes.

The man is pulling me off of Mommy’s leg. He’s very strong. I squirm to get away, but he picks me up anyway. I yell and squirm. His face is very close to mine. He is smiling but I’m afraid.

I want my Mommy.

I start to cry.

The man looks angry. He puts me down and lets go fast. 

I fall with a thump on my bottom. I reach up for Mommy to pick me up.

She is looking at the man and doesn't see me.

 *****

Thanks, Gail, for your submission!

There won't be a writing exercise this coming weekend, but I will return to it the following week (June 26th).

Off now to do Wedding errands... what an exciting week!