Willard

In my earliest memory, I am in a two-story farmhouse on a large piece of land overrun with blueberry bushes. The air is crisp. There is a lengthy dirt driveway which leads out onto a dirt road. Along the edge of the road, a small stream trickles by, running parallel to it for quite a ways. I am wandering from bush to bush eating the blueberries I can reach. The sun is shining on my face in a gentle morning sort of way. I described this to my Dad recently, and he looked shocked. He said the only time I had ever been there, I was 18 months old. His earliest memory was at age 4.
I'm not entirely sure, but I have often heard that for most people, the earliest memories they can recall occur no sooner than 4 years of age. Maybe those first couple years of life are so stressful for the brain, with all of the severing and also creating of new connections, that the cataloging of memory is not a priority. Maybe it is difficult for us to allow ourselves to remember being as helpless as a baby. Only once in my life have I met someone who claims to remember anything earlier than 18 months.
Willard was his nickname. He was a family friend, and he was around for a lot of my younger years. He and my mother took me to the beach together when I was little. They had grown up together. He was fascinating, very eccentric, and awfully intelligent. He was in and out of my life for as long as I could remember. He left for periods of years sometimes, but he would always come back. When I was 12 he gave me my first Skinny Puppy tape, and he recommended that I might like a group called Ministry. His life nearly revolved around music. He left again. I aged 3 years. One day he showed up at our house in a stolen car. He had escaped the psychiatric hospital. He had AIDS induced dymentia, and was experiencing something close to Alzheimer's: a regression of memory. He wasn't losing his ability to speak though, as is common with that ailment. Before anyone could locate him and take him back to the facility, he told me a story. He told me the story of his being born: of what it felt like to be born, of how it felt to breathe air for the first time, and of how it stung to be struck immediately upon entering the world. His account was different than I might have though it would feel. He said it felt like dying when you breathed in air for the first time. Here was a person who had somehow reached far enough back to remember the beginning of his life, even if was the result of a terminal illness. He knew something I didn't. He had know himself everyday of his life. He had tapped into something that had always been there, but just wasn't accessible before. He told me before they pulled him away that he wanted me to know that. That he thought it was important. That that was why he had stolen the car. So now, I wonder, was it important for me to know that he remembered being born, or was it important for me to know that I could remember being born. Based on the rest of our conversation, I think it was the latter. Why this comes to mind today, I don't know. What I do know is that I want to go that far back. No matter how helpless it feels, or how painful the memory may be, I want it.