My Very First Memories

My first actual memory involves the birth of my sister Joanne. I was 2 years, 19 months old, and I was talking by this time. Pat was only a little over 10 months old and was just beginning to walk. Joanne and Pat are what was called "Irish twins," babies who were born less than a year apart.

Pat was very different from me. He was blonde with blue eyes, whereas I had very dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. Plus he was very much a little boy and I was definitely a very proper little girl.  He was quite round and solid, and always had a scowl on his face. It seemed that he didn't know how to smile. There is not a baby picture that exists of Pat smiling. To me, he was a strange little creature about twice my size, and I didn't feel a particularly close bond with him. I played mostly by myself because he was too young to play with me.

At the time of my sister's birth, my mother went to the hospital. It was June 1952. Pat and I were taken to stay with my Aunt Elsie and Uncle Bob (my father's brother) and my cousins John and Michael (Mikey). John was 5 years old and Mikey was 3 years old. Mikey was 9 months older than me, and we played well together. However, almost as soon as we arrived at their house, all of us children came down with conjunctivitis (pink eye). All of us children, the four of us age 5 and under, were absolutely miserable. My grandmother Rose came over to help my aunt take care of us all. Pink eye lasts several days, so even when my mother and sister came home from the hospital, Pat and I could not go home until we were over the conjunctivitis.

My first vivid memory is of sitting on my aunt's kitchen counter while she bathed my crusty eyes with a boric acid solution to soften and wash off the sticky crusts. I remember crying because I couldn't open my eyes and because the boric acid solution was cold and wet and was running down my face. It felt awful and I hated that I couldn't get my eyes open. I remember my father coming into my aunt's house to check on us, to see when we would be able to come home. All I wanted to do was to go home, because I must have thought that everything would be better at home and I missed my mother and father. I wanted that sticky, crusty stuff on my eyes to go away. I didn't really care about having a baby sister. I just wanted to feel better.

Later in the summer, I was outside playing  by myself in the backyard on the top of the concrete slab that covered our water well when our next-door neighbor, Levina Heilmann, came walking through the yard on her way to our other neighbors' house. She stopped to talk to me about the new baby. She asked me, "What color are the baby's eyes?" I replied, "First they were sort of blue, but now Mommy says they are changing to brown. So I think they must be brown." And indeed, Joanne's eyes did change to brown.

These are the very earliest memories that I have of my life. At this age, not quite 3 years old, I was able to understand adults when they spoke to me, and I could communicate quite well with them and carry on a conversation. That's what one needs to remember things--language.