William George Davies - Monday Memories

Earliest Recollections

I have been trying to remember my earliest memory.

How old was I when I have a conscience memory and  what was the situation surrounding it.  I have to be careful not to make the "memory" something that I saw in a photograph.  I was borne in Lethbridge, but lived the first years of my life in Edmonton.  My dad was in school and latter had graduated from University of Alberta in Edmonton, but in the summers my folks would move home to Lethbridge and live in a little house on the farm.  My older sister and I were June babies.

Some random memories were about the day my parents had been gone for an hour or so, when they came home they called us all in from the back yard, and  I remember my dad had a stern voice.  When we came in the house I remember thinking it was strange that my mom still had her coat on.  We were all told to sit on the couch.  Then my dad said, "I know you girls have been wanting us to have a new baby- so here is an addition to our family" and my mom opened her coat and pulled out a little white puppy. We named her "Lady Pup", she was a terrier/Pomeranian mix.

I can remember going to the farm where my other grandparents lived, Grandma and Grandpa Davies.  I remember they had a horse and I went outside with Grandma and had to step over a big puddle of water to get inside the barn or chicken coop.  I remember sitting on Grandpa's lap and he had a Chinese bamboo back-scratcher hanging on the wall by the table. He would take that and scratch my back, I remember liking that a lot. Also, while sitting on his lap I got to see him roll his own cigarettes, and other thing I remember was that he would tear two small pieces of something like a brown paper bag and lick his two pointer fingers so the paper would stick on them and then he put his hands below the table edges so that I could only see the pointer fingers with the paper pieces on them, and he did the little rhyme about "two little Dickie birds" sitting on the tree, and when he had the "fly away" the paper would come off the finger and then they birds fly away and return. This grandpa (William George Davies) died when I was about 4 years old, so that may be my first memories.

Other memories of things that happened while we lived in Edmonton: (we moved to Richmond, British Columbia and I started 1st grade there)- so all these memories happened before I was five years old

• white cat with blue and green eyes
• birthday cake made to look like a doll with a dress
• having my tonsils out

• 

  Howdy Doody

• the day my mom discovered my neck/head was crooked
• surgery to correct my crooked head
• cousins coming for Christmas
• getting a nurse doll for Christmas
• going to "Play School"- the Canadian equivalent of kindergarten
• field trip to the television station
• having to sit at the table, long after the others - to finish my dinner
• I didn't like onions- they squeaked on my teeth
• our "Lady Pup" having 6 puppies
• watching my favorites on television - "The Friendly Giant" and "Howdy Doody Time"

I am amazed at the memories as they come rushing in....when I sat down this morning to start the post I really wasn't sure how many I would even have.

What are your earliest memories?  Take time to think and to write them down.