My First Memory

I don't know where to start with this so I'll start at the beginning - at least as far as I can remember. I'm glad I can't remember my VERY first beginning. ICU might be responsible for my feelings of isolation, ha ha.

My first memory is moving into the Chilton house in Goliad, Tx when I was three years old. I know I was three because I had my fourth birthday in that house. It was a fourteen room Victorian mansion - that looked haunted on the outside with peeling paint and a wind chime.

(All pictures are of my house, taken from a website of a wonderful couple who restored it. www.chiltonhouse.com - yes, my house has its own website...lol.)

I don't remember much about the wind chime except that it had bells and flat doves on the chain. I found a rusted one that had fallen to the ground, looked up and saw it. Then I made up a story about a little girl who had lived in the house a long time ago and died - I don't remember how but I remember the story was quite tragic.

Don't ask me why. I've never been able to understand my own brain or how it works.

But I still have that wind chime tucked away in a box of "treasures" - like a broken lion-head radio that I'm not sure ever worked...

I was playing chase with Ryan and Sarah who, being older than me, were both faster than me and not as clumsy. The downstairs all made a big circle with (I think) the hallway in the middle of them. So after a while, I could hear voices - but I couldn't find anyone.

I heard Sarah laughing. I hard Mom talking to Grandma Backen.

Then I couldn't hear anyone and I was left to wander through large, empty rooms.

I remembered that they were talking about goin

g out to eat soon and I began to cry, sure that they had forgotten me.

Note: Though I had a knack for getting turned around and lost as a child (and some would argue an adult), my parents never once left me. Nor did they threaten to leave me. I'm not sure where that overwhelming fear came from but there it was, amongst all the other irrational fears I had.

In fact, now that I think about it, I remember Mom picking me up (probably when she found me) and I sobbed that I couldn't find anyone and I thought they left me.

She assured me that she would never forget about me.

Or leave me.