My earliest memory

My earliest memory is Christmas Day, 1952. We went to my maternal grandmother's house at 69 North Fulton Street after supper. It was dark, the front hall lit only by the lights on the tree anchoring one corner of the entry next to the stairs. I was set down on the floor while my parents went to greet family in the front parlor, living room and dining room. The tree was, to me, enormous, filling up my view with fragrant evergreen scent and red, yellow and green bubble lights strung along the lower branches. I crawled over for a closer look, grabbed a mittful of cord and pulled the light towards me for a closer look at the bubbles. And the tree came crashing down. I don't remember being frightened but I must have been startled because the memory, brief as it is, is very clear.

My mother tells me - and this I don't remember - of the afternoon a few weeks later when we were both upstairs and I wandered off, toddling straight for the stairs. Mom, being seven and a half months pregnant with Chris, couldn't run fast enough to catch me. To this day she says she can see the plaid dress I was wearing as I tumbled down all fifteen stairs. In a panic she called her mother, who came running. Mom was supposed to pick dad up at the airport that day but took me to the hospital instead and dad was met at the airport by Gram. I was bruised but unbroken, much to my mother's relief.

The only other flash of memory I have from my infancy and toddlerhood is that of sitting on my great-grandfather MJ Cuddy's lap. He wore a black suit with black vest, and dangled a gold pocket watch from a chain attached to a small pocket in his vest. He died in April 1953 so I couldn't have been more than 15 months at the time. I don't remember a scent; Jameson's Irish whiskey mixed with mothballs would have been apt. My dad always smelled of Old Spice; he should have bought stock in the company as he got it by the gallon in every conceivable form for better than twenty years. But that's another post.