what is your earliest memory essay

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My earliest memory essay sample, example.

First memories of oneself can be easily confused with fabricated memories made by looking at old pictures, movies, and hearing stories related to one’s personal history. This is the case for me: I have seen so many home movies, heard so many stories about myself, and seen so many pictures about my early childhood, I do not know for certain what my first memory is in actuality. Since I cannot pinpoint my first memory exactly, I will unfold a series of memories that were the earliest in my childhood.

Another sharp early memory of mine was when I examined my body. I was curious, as most children are, about the texture and form of the body we are given at birth. From an early age, I had four operations: two open heart surgeries, and two hernia surgeries. I would feel my scars, which scale up my chest and travel near my groin as if they were landscapes, burned into my skin until age would fade them away. Besides scars, I would relish over the smallest of particulars about my eyes, which have hazel lines shooting out from the pupils. I would examine my life state through my eyes: I could see how I was on the whole through them. My hands were also a point of curiosity for me: my left hand is significantly smaller than my right hand because of surgeries. Comparing them was and still is a bit of a fetish of mine.

I learned to ride a bicycle quite early, though I do not remember the exact age. My father was a professional cyclist at one point, and he wanted his son to be keen in the sport as well. But I remember my first attempt to ride a bicycle without training wheels ending disastrously and humorously. Out on the main street next to our house, where there were almost no cars driving around back then due to less population, I started out okay on a small child-bike. My balance was fine from the start, but then I got overexcited and lost my balance, eventually smashing into our mailbox. Though my dad was concerned about my safety at first, after he saw that nothing serious had happened to me, he laughed without hesitation and was poking fun at me. I did not feel discouraged—in fact, I was laughing along after a few seconds.

I have many more scattered memories that could count as first memories, even though they are mixed in with my impressions from watching home movies, seeing pictures, and hearing stories about my childhood. We may not know our first memory for certain, but once we try to dig it up, the world we lived in as a child begins to pour through the lens of visual thought, bringing back the atmosphere of this time into the present moment, like an incense smoke that softly curls around our present senses.

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My Earliest Childhood Memories, Essay Example

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One of my earliest childhood memories is when my father and I found a baby bird lying on the ground underneath a tree. Though I have never actually determined if this is true, the conventional wisdom at the time (and according to everyone I’ve ever discussed it with) was that if we returned the bird to the nest, the mother bird would reject the baby bird because it now carried the scent of a human being. In the internet age of instant access to information, that is the kind of thing we might have looked up online before proceeding. At the time, however, the closest thing we had to the internet was my set of Encyclopedias, and we were unable to determine from those whether the “human scent” issue was a genuine concern or a mere wives’ tale. Choosing to err on the side of caution –and with the only other option being a potentially dangerous excursion into a fairly tall, and not easily-accessible tree, we chose to take the bird in and do what we could to nurse it back to health.

My father, using what little information he had at his disposal, purchased some earthworms from a local bait shop and conjured up a home-made “bird food” of mashed-up earth-worm and a small amount of milk. He created a makeshift birds’ nest from an old cigar box and some shredded newspaper, keeping it warm with a small desk lamp. Several times a day, we fed this baby bird with an eyedropper, squirting small amounts of this “worm juice” concoction into its eager gullet. My mother got in on the act as well, taking responsibility for the daytime feedings while I was at school and my father was at work.

Surprisingly, and to my great joy, the bird survived the ordeal, and was soon doing its best to leave its new nest. We moved the box to the back porch, a screened-in area with plenty of room for the fledgling bird to practice its new-found flight skills in relative safety. Before long, the half-blind, squawking little creature had blossomed into a fully-feathered avian, ready to fly away and take its rightful place in the sky. Though it was many years ago, and was only a matter of a few days out of my life, it was an experience I never forgot. The compassion my father demonstrated for this tiny, defenseless creature was a life lesson that stayed with me to this day, and in some way, helped to shape the person I’ve become.

Several decades later, with my father now gone, my uncle (my father’s brother) came to stay with me. He was suffering from some rather serious diseases, including AIDS and Hepatitis C. Complications from AIDS had set in, including several bouts of pneumonia. I will admit that when the prospect of my uncle moving in with me first arose, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of being responsible for his care. I had very limited understanding of AIDS and Hepatitis, nor of what the ramifications of caring for an AIDS patient would mean in practical terms. I had a lot of soul-searching to do; not only was I fearful of the disease, I will admit that I was also selfishly concerned with what the impact of my uncle’s illnesses would be on my personal life.

As I pondered the situation, and tried to determine what would be the best course of action not just for me, but also for my uncle, I suddenly remembered that tiny little bird that my father had rescued so many years ago. Some men would have simply ignored the helpless creature, and left it there for nature to take its course. Others may have chosen to climb the tree and place it back in the nest, knowing that it would likely be rejected by its mother, but severing personal responsibility to the baby bird, and ending any concern for its fate. But my father did neither; he took the most difficult choice, but the only right choice; he took the defenseless and scared little creature into his home, and he showed me what real compassion was, by nursing that bird until it was ready to fly away.

Sadly, my uncle was not in the same situation as that baby bird. He was not going to fly away someday; the ravages of his illnesses were taking their toll, and he slipped a little further away every day. Like my father on the day we came across that baby bird, I had choices to make. I could let my uncle’s illnesses be someone else’s problem, or I could do my best to help ease his burden. And as I recalled the lessons of love and compassion I learned from my father, I realized I really had no choice; my uncle needed someone to pick him up and make him comfortable, and there was no question that I was the one to do that.

Those were trying times in the last few months of my uncle’s life. As he slowly lost control of his bodily functions, and as he slipped further and further into the fog of pain and medication, I sometimes thought that the challenges were too much to bear. Yet every day I found just a little bit more strength, another small reserve of energy and willpower, and I carried on for another day. And when the day finally came that he was gone, I realized that I hadn’t used up all my strength, but in fact I had received a wonderful gift from my uncle. For in his passing, I learned something about myself: I learned that the greatest part of my father, the part of him that I loved and admired, had in some small way been passed on to me.

For the lessons I learned from these two men, the one who cared so much and the one who needed so much care, I will always be grateful. Truly, the best way I can honor them, and thank them for the gifts they gave me, is to continue on in the nursing profession so I can share with others the gifts they shared with me.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Life Experiences — Childhood Memories

Childhood Memories Essay Examples

Childhood memories essay topics.

Childhood memories are the recollections of experiences, people, and events from our early years. These memories shape our personalities, influence our behaviors, and contribute to our understanding of the world. Exploring childhood memories can evoke nostalgia, highlight important life lessons, and offer insights into one's personal development. Writing about childhood memories allows us to reflect on the past, understand our present, and share meaningful stories that connect us with others.

Childhood Memories Essay Prompt Samples

Before we embark on this journey down memory lane, let's first understand what a childhood memories essay entails. An essay prompt typically serves as your guiding star in crafting your piece. Here are a few samples to give you an idea of what to expect:

• "Write an essay about a significant childhood memory that shaped your character."
• "Describe a vivid childhood experience that left a lasting impact on your life."
• "Reflect on a cherished memory from your early years and discuss its significance."

These prompts serve as the foundation for your essay. They help you identify the core theme and purpose of your narrative.

Brainstorming the Perfect Childhood Memories Essay Topics

It's time to brainstorm and select the most fitting topic for your childhood memories essay. Consider the following points:

• Emotional Impact: Think about memories that evoke strong emotions. These are often the most compelling stories.
• Life Lessons: Reflect on memories that taught you valuable life lessons or shaped your perspective.
• Vividness: Choose memories with vivid details and sensory experiences; they make your essay come alive.
• Uniqueness: Opt for memories that stand out or have a unique twist, avoiding overly common topics.

By considering these points, you can pinpoint a memory that not only resonates with you but also captivates your readers.

Examples of Unique Essay Topics

Now, let's explore some unique and captivating essay topics that revolve around childhood memories. These topics are sure to stand out from the crowd:

• "The Day I Discovered a Hidden Treasure in Grandma's Attic.
• A Magical Encounter with a Friendly Stray Cat: My Childhood Confidant.
• The Great Lemonade Stand Adventure: Lessons in Entrepreneurship.
• An Unexpected Journey: Getting Lost and Finding My Way Home.
• The Night Our Backyard Turned into an Enchanted Forest

These topics offer a fresh perspective on childhood memories, ensuring your essay engages your audience from start to finish.

Crafting Inspiring Paragraphs and Phrases

To bring your childhood memories essay to life, you need to infuse it with captivating paragraphs and phrases. Here are some samples to inspire your writing:

• "As I climbed up the creaky attic stairs, the dust danced in the sunlight streaming through the cracks. There, amidst forgotten relics of the past, I stumbled upon a weathered, leather-bound journal that held secrets from generations long gone."
• "The stray cat, with its fur as soft as memories themselves, became my confidant. We'd spend endless afternoons together, sharing secrets only a child and a feline friend could understand."
• "With a cardboard sign in hand and a heart full of dreams, I set up my first lemonade stand on that scorching summer day. The taste of success was as sweet as the lemonade itself."
• "As twilight descended, the stars emerged in our enchanted backyard. Fireflies danced, and the trees whispered secrets to my young ears, painting a canvas of wonder and magic."

Feel free to use these samples as a starting point for your own narrative. Remember, the key is to paint a vivid and emotional picture with your words.

With these insights, you're well on your way to crafting an outstanding childhood memories essay that will leave a lasting impression. Embrace the nostalgia, choose a unique topic, and let your words transport your readers back to your cherished moments of the past.

Childhood Memories: The Best Trips from My Childhood

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Nostalgia of My Childhood Years

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Childhood Memories and Thier Influence on Me

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About My Grandpa in My Childhood Memories

Memories of my childhood home, personal writing: my childhood story, priceless picture: the importance of my mom's picture in my life, the role of memorable memories in our lives, my horrible experience of getting lost in the jungle, a personal narrative about disneyland, the happiest place on earth, the beautiful feeling of exploring different things in life, personal account of my experience as a teen, personal account of leadership in sixth grade and experience as an accident victim, the characterization of the narrator's childhood memories in cherry bomb, a story by maxine clair, an analysis of the pictures representing my convergence and personality, motherhood and childhood in gabriela mistral’s works, interpretation of theodore roethke’s poem my papa’s waltz, an observation of infants and toddlers, my life's journey: childhood memories to career accomplishments, personal story of life as a christian and educational aspiration of being a nurse, personal narrative: childhood memories with my grandparents, which way of thinking is better, dreaming big or being satisfied with small thoughts, childhood memories in annie dillard's 'the chase'.

Childhood memories are the recollections and impressions of events, experiences, people, and emotions from one's early years, typically from infancy through adolescence. These memories can be vivid or vague and often hold significant emotional value. They play a crucial role in shaping an individual's personality, values, and worldview, influencing behaviors and attitudes in later life. Childhood memories can encompass a wide range of experiences, from everyday moments to significant life events, and are often revisited with nostalgia and reflection.

• Most people’s earliest memories typically date back to around age 3 to 4 years, though some can recall events from as early as age 2.
• Childhood memories are often fragmented and less detailed compared to adult memories due to the ongoing development of the brain's hippocampus, which is crucial for memory formation.
• Sights, sounds, smells, and even tastes can trigger vivid childhood memories, bringing past experiences to the forefront of one’s mind.
• People often selectively remember pleasant childhood experiences and may subconsciously block out more traumatic or negative events.
• The ability to recall childhood memories can change with age, with some memories becoming clearer and others fading over time.

Exploring childhood memories is important because they shape our identity, values, and behaviors. Understanding these memories provides insights into personal development and emotional well-being. Reflecting on childhood experiences can foster empathy, enhance self-awareness, and improve mental health. Delving into childhood memories essay topics allows for a deeper connection with others through shared stories and experiences, enriching our understanding of human nature.

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Earliest Memories Start at Age Two and a Half, Study Finds

Joni Sweet is an experienced writer who specializes in health, wellness, travel, and finance.

Nick Blackmer is a librarian, fact-checker, and researcher with more than 20 years’ experience in consumer-oriented health and wellness content. He keeps a DSM-5 on hand just in case.

Key Takeaways

• New research shows that our earliest memories may begin at age 2.5, about a year sooner than previously thought.
• How far back you can remember depends on a long line-up of factors, including your culture, gender, family, and the way in which you’re asked to recall memories.
• You may be able to remember further back when asked repeatedly over time what your earliest memory is.

How far back can you remember? The answer might be even earlier than you think, according to new research.

In a study recently published in the journal Memory , researchers found that people could recall things that happened to them from as far back at age 2.5 years old on average—about a year earlier than previously estimated.

The research also suggests that there’s actually a “pool of potential memories” that people can pull from, rather than a fixed beginning, and you may be able to recall even older memories when interviewed repeatedly about them.

Here’s what the latest research says about how far back our memory actually goes and why it matters for the narrative of your life.

For this study, researcher Carole Peterson, PhD , professor in the department of psychology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, reviewed previous research on childhood amnesia and analyzed data collected in her laboratory over the last two decades to better understand early memories .

The data showed that people’s earliest memories can often be traced back to age 2.5. Scientists previously believed that a person’s memory clock started at around 3.5 years old.  

David Copeland, PhD

It might be difficult to pinpoint the one true ‘earliest memory’ for anyone.

“This article explored the idea of infantile amnesia—this is an idea that researchers have considered for years and it states that people do not remember much (or anything) from their first 2 to 3 years of life,” explains David Copeland, PhD , associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “This line of research is suggesting that we might have memories a little bit earlier than that.”

The research also found that just how far back any one individual’s memory goes depends on a variety of factors, such as: 

• nationality
• home environment (urban vs. rural)
• how your parent recalls their memories
• intelligence
• birth order
• the size of your family

Cassandra Fallon, LMFT

This study will lend validation to people that even from a young age, children do see and are impacted by their environment, the people in them, and events around them.

“This study will lend validation to people that even from a young age, children do see and are impacted by their environment, the people in them, and events around them,” says Cassandra Fallon, LMFT , a therapist at Thriveworks.

Fallon continues, “The fact that recalling memories is a challenge and that this study gives permission for this to be acceptable is helpful for validating that we may not ever know some details, like dates and times, but that it does not take away from the fact that we experienced or felt what we did and that it impacts us.”

Another important factor in how far you can remember is how you’re asked to recall your earliest memory, the study found. Your earliest memory may not be permanently fixed. Instead, extensive interviews and multiple follow-ups over the span of months or years could help you pull even earlier recollections from your memory bank in some cases.

“This aligns with what I observe in my clinic. I advise my patients to create timelines of their life, and this helps them access early memories,” says Leela Magavi, MD , psychiatrist and regional medical director at  Community Psychiatry  in Newport Beach, California. “They are often surprised by how much they can remember once they complete this activity.”

The research concluded there’s fluidity in retrieving early experiences and that one’s earliest memory may actually be malleable.

“In other words, it might be difficult to pinpoint the one true ‘earliest memory’ for anyone,” adds Copeland.

Why Early Memories Matter

Regardless of how far back they go, your earliest memories may provide therapeutic opportunities.

“Early memories often align with individuals’ core values, fears, hopes, and dreams. Learning about early memories can allow individuals to nurture their inner child and heal from the stressful or traumatic situations they have endured throughout their life,” says Dr. Magavi. “It can also help them gain clarity and embrace what matters the most to them.”

Leela Magavi, MD

Early memories often align with individuals’ core values, fears, hopes, and dreams. Learning about early memories can allow individuals to nurture their inner child and heal from the stressful or traumatic situations they have endured throughout their life.

Early memories—even those that have been reconstructed from external sources beyond what’s in our minds—can also play an important role in constructing the overall narrative of your life, says Copeland.

“For example, whether someone truly remembers the experience of falling off of a tricycle at age 3 or they learn about it from family members’ stories or from seeing pictures, it might not matter—as long as the event actually happened, it can be a part of one’s life narrative,” he says. “Someone might use it as a theme in their life of overcoming difficulties ever since they were young.”

Overall, these early memories help us to better understand ourselves, which can help us lead more fulfilling lives.

“The better we know ourselves, both attributes and challenges, the better we are able to make changes or maintain awareness for consistency. It is a powerful thing to know our strengths to continue using them and to know our weaknesses so that we can grow and learn to become a better become better version of ourselves,” says Fallon.

She adds: “This improves self-confidence, eases anxiety, reduces depression, and builds our grit, determination, and resiliency to handle anything life throws at us.”

What This Means For You

Your earliest memories can teach you a lot about yourself. Just how far back you can recall depends on a variety of factors, but new research shows that our memory bank may start at age 2.5 on average.

Repeatedly being interviewed about your earliest memories may allow you to remember things that happened at an even younger age. But experts say the age at which your earliest memory occurred doesn’t matter quite as much as putting that information into the context of your life and finding ways to grow from it. These memories, when placed into our overall narratives, provide opportunities to heal from trauma and handle the obstacles of life. 

Peterson C. What is your earliest memory? It depends .  Memory . 2021;29(6):811-822. doi:10.1080/09658211.2021.1918174

By Joni Sweet Joni Sweet is an experienced writer who specializes in health, wellness, travel, and finance.

Childhood Memories Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on childhood memories.

Memories are a vital component of our bodies. They shape our personality as all our knowledge and past experiences are stored there. All of us have memories, both good and bad. You have memories from long ago and also from recent times. Furthermore, some memories help us get by tough days and make us cheerful on good days.

Memories are the little things which help in running our lives smoothly. In other words, memories are irreplaceable and they are very dear to us. They help us learn from our mistakes and make us better. In my opinion, one’s childhood memories are the dearest to anyone. They help in keeping the child in you alive. Moreover, it also is a reason for our smiles in between adult life.

Importance of Childhood Memories

Childhood memories are very important in our lives. It makes us remember the best times of our lives. They shape our thinking and future. When one has good childhood memories, they grow up to be happy individuals. However, if one has traumatic childhood memories, it affects their adult life gravely.

Thus, we see how childhood memories shape our future. They do not necessarily define us but they surely play a great role. It is not important that someone with traumatic childhood memories may turn out to be not well. People get past their traumatic experiences and grow as human beings. But, these memories play a great role in this process as well.

Most importantly, childhood memories keep the inner child alive. No matter how old we get, there is always a child within each one of us. He/She comes out at different times.

For instance, some may act like a child on seeing swings; the other may get excited like a child when they see ice cream. All this happens so because we have our childhood memories reminding us of the times associated with the things we get excited about. Therefore, childhood memories play a great role in our lives.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

My Childhood Memories

Growing up, I had a very loving family. I had three siblings with whom I used to play a lot. I remember very fondly the games we use to play. Especially, in the evenings, we used to go out in the park with our sports equipment. Each day we played different games, for example, football on one day and cricket on the other. These memories of playing in the park are very dear to me.

Furthermore, I remember clearly the aroma of my grandmother’s pickles. I used to help her whenever she made pickles. We used to watch her do the magic of combining the oils and spices to make delicious pickles. Even today, I can sometimes smell her pickles whenever I look back at this memory.

Most importantly, I remember this instance very clearly when we went out for a picnic with my family. We paid a visit to the zoo and had an incredible day. My mother packed delectable dishes which we ate in the zoo. My father clicked so many pictures that day. When I look at these pictures, the memory is so clear, it seems like it happened just yesterday. Thus, my childhood memories are very dear to me and make me smile when I feel low.

Q.1 Why is Childhood Memories important?

A.1 Childhood memories shape our personality and future. They remind us of the good times and help us get by on tough days. Moreover, they remind us of past experiences and mistakes which help us improve ourselves.

Q.2 What can be a common childhood memory for all?

A.2 In my opinion, a childhood memory most of us have in common is the first day of school. Most of us remember what we felt like on the first day. In addition, our birthdays are also very common childhood memory that reminds us of gifts and celebrations on that day.

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Melinda Johnson, Writing

What is your earliest memory of writing?

Once upon a time, when I was little, I went outdoors on a summer afternoon. I walked down the long driveway, from the backdoor of our yellow house, past the garden and the swingset, toward the garage. As I walked, I heard my own voice inside my head, telling the story of what I was doing. I knew the story stretched back to my beginning, and that I was just noticing it, not beginning it. I knew the story was happening still, and that it would keep on happening, as long as I kept on telling it.

That is my first memory of writing. At the time, I was only 4 or 5 years old. I wouldn’t have called it “writing” then, but when I follow the ribbon of my words all the way back, that moment is their anchor

Next, I recall a day in 4th or 5th grade when I decided to write a detective story. I wrote the title, The Mystery of the Golden Bell, across the top of the page and began on my story, scrawling along in pencil until I reached the end of the paper. I started on the next sheet, wondering what would happen next. And then it happened – the revelatory moment when I realized that if I was going to write the story, I had to know what was going to happen in the story! Alas, I had no idea what happened in the story, so The Mystery of the Golden Bell remains unsolved.

I’m interested in the beginnings of things, so I asked some friends to share their earliest memory of writing. I find the responses fascinating (also cute, funny, and characteristic).

My friend Katherine’s first memory is oddly appropriate to her later life. She’s a published author of a series called Crime with the Classics . I love that her earliest writing memory involves a “trial” with her mother playing counsel for the defense.

In sixth grade we were assigned to write a short story (possibly from a prompt, I don’t remember). The teacher accused me of having copied my story from a women’s magazine. My mother successfully defended me from this charge. I remember nothing about my story except that the main character was named Betty. Katherine

I was struck by how many writing memories are connected to teachers. It’s a good reminder that writing is social: the activity itself may be solitary, but what is written is a communication, and sometimes we need help from mentors and friends to launch it into the world.

I remember in the 3rd grade my teacher trying to encourage me to enter a story that I wrote for a class assignment to a state writing contest. I was so nervous and scared that I told her I couldn’t send it in. After much encouragement, I agreed to let her mail it in. About 3 months later, my teacher called me up to her desk before going outside for recess. All the kids had gone outside. She handed me a large manila envelope. As I opened it, a 1st place ribbon fell into my lap. I pulled out a spiral bound book. It was the stories of all the top 5 winners. I remember just sitting there shocked. My teacher had a huge smile on her face, and she showed me a box of books that I had won for our school. I couldn’t believe that I went from being this kindergartener who struggled with English and who saw a special teacher to help with reading writing, to a 3rd grader who won a state writing competition. It still makes me smile and warms my heart thinking about it. Nancy

My third grade teacher taught us how to write poetry and arranged to have several of us read our poems on a local radio station. That was a thrilling experience for me and inspired a lot of poetry writing in my school years. Some of my poems were published in obscure little anthologies of children’s poetry. Funny, I’m not sure I even remember how to write poetry now. Elizabeth

In first grade, our teacher had us do little writing assignments. But I don’t remember what I wrote. What I remember is that she wrote a poem about me being an author. Definitely changed my life. Laura

The 5th grade teacher would give us lists of spelling words to use in sentences. I made the sentences into a story. The 6th grade teacher asked, “Have you ever heard the term ‘stream of consciousness’? That’s what you’re writing.” Frederica

In addition to helping build good writers, good teachers make good teachers! Check out this memory!

[My first memory is of] Learning to write in Kindergarten. We had these 10×10 (?) Letter books with tactile glitter letters on the front (one book per letter). I also remember Phonics workbooks and spelling tests. 😂 Creative writing memories are mostly from 6th grade because I think we actually had creative writing time with my teacher. I teamed up with a classmate and we wrote a “scary” story that was shared at the end of the year writing celebration. This is one reason why I loved doing writers notebooks with my 6th graders when I taught ELA. Drop everything and write days. It was the first chance in school they were ever told to write whatever they wanted to write! For some it was a challenge and they needed prompts. For others, they thrived in being able to express their thoughts and ideas. Otherwise quiet or class clown kids let their creativity shine! Irene

This next made me chuckle. It’s from one of our #Blogtown friends, Elzabeta at God Has Promised .

I wrote a series of interviews with Garfield the Cat. A lot of lasagna was spilled. I also wrote my own sequel to The Empire Strikes Back because George Lucas was taking too long. Elzabeta

George Lucas was taking too long! 😀

Here’s another early writer with her eyes on Hollywood.

In second grade I wrote Charlie’s Angels FAN-FICTION on construction paper in crayon. I think. Now I’m starting to doubt my memory. I definitely wrote SOMETHING in crayon and folded the construction paper into a ‘book’. Cynthia

There were so many stories shared that there isn’t room for all of them in this post, so I’ll close with this one, which I love because it resonates with my own, deep, early memories of STORY – the core of all meaning and beauty in my world.

Well, I remember in kindergarten, we were all writing stories about sea creatures–but I was incredibly frustrated, because my teacher wouldn’t let me write it down myself, instead insisting on taking my dictation. Certain other classmates with neater handwriting were allowed to write their own, and I felt it was a great injustice. (The story itself was about a sea urchin, which I liked because they were purple, and was quite inane.) My first memory of storytelling, however, was before that, a collaboration between myself and a truly remarkable babysitter (also Orthodox). My backyard was transformed into a magical realm, with each landmark being given Anne of Green Gables-style names, and C. S. Lewis-like cosmological significance. My dolls were central characters, of course, and were joined by several more who were portrayed by her and by myself at various points in the story. Together, with the aid of my trusty slingshot, we worked our way through rising tension, the apocalypse, and even into the Age to Come. If I ever write a story that feels as beautiful and exciting as that one did to me then, and does still despite my forgetfulness of the particulars, I will be well-pleased. Elizabeth

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8 thoughts on “ What is your earliest memory of writing? ”

In a way, the love for narrative was acquired at age 5. When I was about 11, my teacher would read to us, then ask us to write what we felt about it. Other times, there were experiments in describing a painting, music, in similar fashion. I loved these exercises; my heart would beat a little faster when the next such exercise would come along. Composition became more complicated in junior high and high school, and increasingly enjoyable. In college, writing poems, essays and short stories followed; then one day I wrote a review of a musical light show for the student newspaper. Seeing it in print, and hearing how others reacted to it, identified with it, hooked me. I changed my major from Psychology to Journalism, graduated and spent the next 45 years as a news reporter, editor, and feature writer. It’s been a journey with the Word, and words.

It’s amazing to look back and see the path. Makes you wonder what path you’re on now that you can’t yet see the end of.

My earliest memory of “writing” might also be my earliest memory of drawing. I was three years old, and I remember trying to draw the outline of the letter “H” on a brown paper bag. I was sitting on a linoleum kitchen floor covered with cheesy 1970s paisley patterns. No idea why it was that particular letter, though.

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Fascinating! My mom made us sketch books out of brown paper bags, and I remember drawing on them when I was very small.

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I love this and the stories you shared. My sister read to me when we were kids so I have always enjoyed reading.

I read my first poem in third grade. The teacher would give us one poem a week to illustrate. I would spend hours coloring and drawing mine front and back. At the end of the year we had about 30 pages in a book! I still have it.

I remember really connecting with Robert Frost at that time. The tone of his poems was enough to get me curious. It just evolved from there. Writing is good medicine these days! And so much fun.

What a great way to connect to poetry!

What a fun post to read! As a child I loved to write simple stories and draw the pictures for them. My mom actually kept one of my earliest ones and gave it to me recently. It’s a story about a prince saving a princess. Even though I’ve never had any writing published I’m so proud to see my own daughter stretch her wings. She won fourth place in a regional competition and had her story published in an anthology! She’s written another short story and her creative writing teacher is helping her to try to get it published!

Good for her! I think sometimes we are the fruit, and sometimes we are the tree that bears the fruit. What we haven’t managed in our own lives sometimes comes to our children in theirs.

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What Is Your Earliest Memory? Can Start From the Age of Two-and-a-Half According to New Research

By Taylor & Francis Group June 14, 2021

A new study suggests that, on average, people’s earliest memories can be traced back to when they were just two-and-a-half years old.

New study and a review of decades of data pushes the memory clock back over a year, but the study confirms everyone is different.

On average the earliest memories that people can recall point back to when they were just two-and-a-half years old, a new study suggests.

The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Memory , pushes back the previous conclusions of the average age of earliest memories by a whole year.

They are presented in a new 21-year study, which followed on from a review of already-existing data.

“When one’s earliest memory occurs, it is a moving target rather than being a single static memory,” explains childhood amnesia expert and lead author Dr. Carole Peterson, from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

“Thus, what many people provide when asked for their earliest memory is not a boundary or watershed beginning, before which there are no memories. Rather, there seems to be a pool of potential memories from which both adults and children sample.

“And, we believe people remember a lot from age two that they don’t realize they do.

“That’s for two reasons. First, it’s very easy to get people to remember earlier memories simply by asking them what their earliest memory is, and then asking them for a few more. Then they start recalling even earlier memories – sometimes up to a full year earlier. It’s like priming a pump; once you get them started its self-prompting.

“Secondly, we’ve documented those early memories are systematically misdated. Over and over again we find people think they were older than they actually were in their early memories.”

For more than 20 years Dr. Peterson has conducted studies on memory, with a particular focus on the ability of children and adults to recall their earliest years.

This latest research reviewed 10 of her research articles on childhood amnesia followed by analyses of both published and unpublished data collected in Dr Peterson’s laboratory since 1999. It featured a total of 992 participants, and the memories of 697 participants were then compared to the recollections of their parents.

Overall, it shows that children’s earliest memories come before when they think it happened, as confirmed by their parents.

In some of the research reviewed by Peterson, the evidence to move our potential memory clock is “compelling”. For example, when reviewing a study that interviewed children after two and eight years had passed since their earliest memory they were able to recall the same memory, however, in the subsequent interviews gave a later age as to when they occurred.

“Eight years later many believed they were a full year older. So, the children, as they age, keep moving how old they thought they were at the time of those early memories,” says Dr. Peterson, from the Department of Psychology at Memorial University.

And she believes that the finding is due to something in memory dating called ‘telescoping’.

“When you look at things that happened long ago, it’s like looking through a lens.

“The more remote a memory is, the telescoping effect makes you see it as closer. It turns out they move their earliest memory forward a year to about three and a half years of age. But we found that when the child or adult is remembering events from age four and up, this doesn’t happen.”

She says, after combing through all of the data, it clearly demonstrates people remember a lot more of their early childhood and a lot farther back than they think they do, and it’s relatively easy to help them access those memories.

“When you look at one study, sometimes things don’t become clear, but when you start putting together study after study and they all come up with the same conclusions, it becomes pretty convincing.”

It’s this lack of clarity that Dr. Peterson states is a limitation of the research and, indeed, all research done to-date in the subject area.

“What is needed now in childhood amnesia research are independently confirmed or documented external dates against which personally derived dates can be compared, as this would prevent telescoping errors and potential dating errors by parents,” Dr. Peterson says.

Such research – using verified dating – is currently ongoing both in her laboratory and elsewhere to further confirm the answer to this long-debated question.

Reference: “What is your earliest memory? It depends” by Carole Peterson, 6 May 2021, Memory . DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2021.1918174

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55 comments on "what is your earliest memory can start from the age of two-and-a-half according to new research".

My earliest memory is more of an image and a thought. I remember seeing a big, bright yellow truck parked in front if our house. And my thought was “why is there a Cheerio’s truck parked in front of our house?” (We were moving and it was a yellow Ryder truck.) I had guessed it was somewhere around age 2 or 3. My mom informed me that I was about a year-and-a-half old.

My earliest memory is of my father carrying me outside at night to watch Sputnik travel across the sky. October 1957. I was born July 1956. I verified this event with my parents years later. So,15 months.

my earliest memory is being on my dad’s shoulders.We were walking though a corn field he was letting me touch the corn stalks.

My earliest memory is crawling across the kitchen floor (I hadn’t learned to walk yet) and tumbling down the basement stairs with my mother in hot pursuit.

I was a toddler around a year old. My Dad gave me his watch and I was able to remove the winding knob. I mentioned this story to him as a teen because he did recall the incident and gave him more background info. Shocked him a good deal.

I can remember being sick in hospital in oxygen tent with pneumonia at about a year old. This was verified by my mother.

My earliest memory is being given a bath in the kitchen sink, and I remember thinking “I’m getting too big to fit in the sink.” When I told my mom, she said she stopped bathing me in sink by the time I was 2. So, I was probably 18 months to 2 yes old. I also remember several aspects of being potty trained, which was done by 2 yrs old. It was a wooden potty chair, and my dad painted it and I remember him putting a decal of duckie in galoshes with an umbrella on the seatback. When it was time to go potty, I always gathered several books for my mom to read to me while I sat on the potty.

My earliest memory was watching my baby brother lying on his back kicking and flailing his hands. He may have been less than two months old based on his birthdate being 2 years, 3 months and 3 days younger than me. So I had to be around 2 years and 4-5 months old.

My earliest memory is the day Pearl Harbor was bombed – Dec.7 1941. I was born January 22, 1939

My earliest memory is of watching my mother running the dust mop over the floor in my bedroom. I was standing in my crib holding the rail with one hand and my glass bottle of milk with my other hand. Bottles were made of glass back then; I was born in 1954. I think I was about 2 years old. Still in my footed pj’s; my mom did her floor mopping in the morning. I remember looking at my bottle and then at the floor. Then I dropped it and watched it hit and roll. My mother turned to me and said “Debbie don’t throw your bottle on the floor it could break and milk would spill everywhere.” She was a little irritated but didn’t yell at me. She picked it up, wiped it off and took it to the bathroom sink to rinse the nipple off. Brought it back to me and told me to hold on to it this time. Lol.

My earliest memory is a little song my father made for me. I don’t remember any words, but I remember the melody to this day. I started humming this song before I could talk and later found out why it made people shocked and then sad. My dad died right before I was born. So I must’ve been 9 or 10 months developed right before I was born.

Mine was at 22 months. Swimming to my Dad in a bay in Newport Beach CA. But I remember many things through my life that people that were there, my friends family, have little to no memory of. Even college. Even when drinking.

My early memory is seeing la luz like orange red

I have memories of my green sponge i would lay on in the bath as an infant. I also remember my diaper covers made of uncomfortable plastic and my diaper pin with a yellow bear on it. I remember the canvas backpack my dad used to carry me in. I remember falling off my sisters top bed of her bunkbed. I remember playing with my dad’s toes to wake him up every morning. I was under 1 years old in all of these memories.

Earliest memory was at my parents first apartment holding on to a pink ottoman. I was born in 1959 and we moved into our house in 1961. So less than 2 years old.

My earliest memory was at 7-8 months old, walking to my dad, along the backside of the couch with my left hand stabilizing me, while my feet delved in between the cushions. I distinctly remember my dad’s face and the slub of the upholstery.

I was 3 years old in my playpen in the living room in November 1963 . My mother was screaming at the TV. The black and white screen showed as the world turns and president Kennedy had just been shot. This is such a clear memory I have never forgotten

My first memory is my nightmare when I was in my crib: A fox was chasing a bunny. Every few steps, the fox and bunny swirled down, as if into drains, then emerged again to repeat, with no escape possible for the terrorized bunny. I stood up and cried. Mother came into my room and gave me a spoonful of Peptobismal, which I liked because pink was my favorite color. Why do I remember that and why does it still frighten me? I don’t remember everything that was traumatizing. My father told me that he laughed when I cried because I couldn’t follow his looping directions: I don’t remember that part, although I do remember how to tie my shoes.

I can remember looking at colors and patterns for an eternity prior to birth. Not knowing anything but that. Also memories from life at 1 year old onward including words said to me. “Do you want a pillow?”

I remember am event from before I could talk and was in a playpen. My parents were arguing and I told them in baby talk to just be nice. I thought I had made a great discovery. They stopped and stated at me and one of them said “It sounds like he’s actually trying to tell us something” Them they resumed arguing. I would have been about 15 months

In my mother’s womb. Dark, so tight I couldn’t move and the pressure on my body was horrific. After the painful, dry birth, I would awake in my bed having that recurrent event for year’s. I was reliving it as a dream and I would awaken frightened.That went on for many years. My next memory was being in a wooden box my dad made for me and I was frustrated because my zip up armies with fists covered we’re driving me crazy. I was on ton of a kitchen table in front of a large picture window and the sun was going down so I was facing west. I could see my mom and dad and they were talking but I couldn’t understand words. After I voiced the memory my mom was able to describe where we lived and why I was bundled up in a box. We were going to a drive-in movie theater and the routine was as I described. She was always afraid I would get cold and the zip up warmies were because of that and I was anywhere from 4 to 8 months old.

My earliest verifiable memory is of an event which happened when I was 14 months old. I have quite a number of specific memories which happened before I was 2 and a half.

Then again, I am autistic, and early memory may function differently for people on the Spectrum.

My earliest memory is being born. This memory is confirmed by my mother.

Moon landing. 2years 2months old.

When I start thinking about my memories I sometimes feel that if being born wasn’t such a tramatic event I might be able to remember being born. I do however have many memories before the age of 2 although which one is earliest is not known.

I can clearly describe our house, our front lawn, activities and specific events that occurred in that home. We moved out of that home when I was 18 months old. My parents tell me the details I recall go back to about 15 months old.

My daughter is almost 10. She has a vivid memory description of the last time I breastfed her, which was the week she turned 12 months old. She has described other events/memories accurately from when she was one. Pretty amazing.

I have many early memories from when I was a toddler, including a trip to New York City before I was 2. But my earliest memory is of looking up at ladies fussing and cooing over me and of wanting to put the beautiful shiny red cherries decorating one of the lady’s 1950’s hats in my mouth. I can vividly remember how beautiful and red they were and how much I wanted them. I described this scene to my mother. She said I was 6 months old. (I also talked very early–began putting words together in sentences at 7 months.)

The time of my earliest memory is firmly determined. Years ago I told my mom about a bad dream. I was playing on a lawn and I rolled away from a rooster and hit my head on a brick edging on the lawn, looked up and saw the corner of a pink stucco house.

Mom said that’s not a dream it really happened you were just a baby and you were attact by Granddad’s rooster. That pink house was our Cross Avenue home. When I was six months old we moved to our El Paso Place home.

I remember being born.

Yup, the first memory of my own existence was when my dad put me on top of the hood of his car to take a picture. I can still feel how insecure and scared I was. It seemed like everything around was really huge. I guess it was. It still seems like not so long ago and I’m 65 now. I have the picture and I was definitely about 2-1/2.

I remember some figments of my first Birthday Especially the people and how they behaved what they asked and what they said. I remember a man coughing on his fist and I was wondering why on earth is he coughing on his fist is it a style or trend?? Other is when I was two and my father bought two dresses for me and asked me to chose one(we meant to return another) so I was making decision of what should I chose according to its price i.e.,which is more frugal rather than shimmer or color.

I told my Mom that I remember laying on the basinette as she changed my diaper by lifting my legs up with her hand to get the diaper under it…like goo goo gah gah 3-4 months old!! She was looking at me in disbelief as I told her that,and told her what color the basinette was(baby blue),that it had a lift top so she could make a small bath in it,and the topper was, I told her what corner of the bedroom it was in,and to specifically tell her where the bedroom door was located from the location of the basinette… Same apartment building now in Chicago,I’m in a high chair,told her it was on north wall in the kitchen,second floor,big yard,alley in back,she had one of her lady friends over. I remember my Mom and her looking at me in the high chair..I was less than 2 years old at the time,because we moved before I was 2 to Elmwood Park,IL.then.

My earliest memory is climbing a set of stairs in our new home and being afraid to come back down. It is also my first memory of being afraid of heights,very much still am. I was 2yrs, 8mos.

I remember my grandmother holding me up in the air in front of her, saying “oh, is that so?” And me being very mad because I was trying to tell her something important but she couldn’t understand me. To her it was all baby talk. I was only a few months old. And I remember my yellow ducky diaper pins and how huge they were, and how they sounded when they were clipped on.

My earliest memories. My dad getting upset with me knocking over his glasses on his nightstand. I believe I was just starting to walk. Being fed potato soup at my great grandmas table. Then riding around in a little toddler car in grandparents hallway.

Wow! Who ever did the study didn’t do much research.

My first memory is of lying on my back in my crib watching my mom brush her hair with a pink hairbrush.

I remember watching my mother with a diaper pin in her mouth, change my diaper. Like a photograph.

My earliest memory was being cradle by my mother. We are going somewhere I could see trees above me and bright light. I think I made a fuzz and my mother hand me to my father. I remember my earliest days learning to walk. I remember my brother trying to catch me thinking I’m going to trip. My mother told him to leave me alone.

18 months is my first memory, confirmed by older sister.

I actually remember when I knew I was a separate person than my Mom and my sibling who is one year older. My dad was in the service and overseas. I would have been two at the time. I loved my turquoise blanket with the satin edges. It felt smooth on my cheek.

I remember things from when I was less than 18 months old. I have photos and remember things that happened at the time the photo was taken

I never forgot when my two year old brain somehow decided it would be a really cool idea to sprinkle Johnson and Johnson’s baby powder all over my room! The bed, the carpet, nothing was spared. Believe me, my mom wasn’t amused. That kid in the photo was me. A photo album of my life was put together and updated regularly. I looked through it several times in my early childhood and I think it had a lot to do with reinforcing my early childhood memories. I even remember the disposable flash cubes used in taking many of the pictures! The Baby Powder Incident of 1975, however, didn’t end up as a Kodak memory, lol.

My first memory is of an event that occurred, (according to my Mother) when I was just 6 months old. My Mom could not believe that I could possibly remember this event, stating that it was impossible because I was only 6 months old! At that point, I grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen with which I proceeded to draw and outline of the scene in which the event took place. I detailed everything I could remember about the event. From my position in the room, as well as where my parents were standing, what they were doing, and the items they were using. I also detailed other elements of the place this event occured in. It was in the kitchen of our home. There were metal cabinets, painted white, with silver colored handles. And Milimac dishes being thrown. I was in my my playpin, apparently watching, and banking the event in my memory. Needless to say, my Mom was was amazed. The next conscious memory I have is of visiting my maternal Grandmother in a hospital. What I remember is sitting in this big room, like a ‘day room’ in this hospital. My Grandmother was sitting on a couch opposite of where I was sitting against the wall opposite of the wall where she sat. Many yrs later I came to realise that the reason Grandma stayed way on the other side of the room was because she was afflicted with taburculosis. But, none the less, even being distanced from each other, I knew,/KNOW, that in that visit she and I created a strong un-spoken bond that only we understand. I must have been 2 or three. Never did my Grandmother and I exchange a single spoken word!! Yet, this connection with her is very real. I am not yet fully sure why she chose to make this connection between us, but, I know she will be there to tell me when time make it NECCASSARY. Like all things…. God will let us both know when God thinks it is time. Thank you, God, for YOUR BLESSINGS, GIFTS, MERCY, LIFE, AND DR. JAMES CONNER OF MERCY SAN JAUN HOSPITAL, CHARMICHAL CA. !!!

I remember my conception. Sorry, but that’s how it shakes out.

I consider it entirely ordinary that the moment of conception is accessible to recall. And, why can’t everybody do it?

My earliest memory believe it or not is this.I remember darkness total nothing need then poor I’m here I’m alive I exist.I didn’t know my name or anything else but I do remember that this was very important and don’t ever forget this.I never did.I know how crazy this sounds but it’s true I saw pink light and I could hear .Eventually I could determine the voices I heard and I could understand the English language that I was hearing.I don’t know how fast or how much time passed until I could see and know which room I was in in my family’s house.All of this took place while I was in my mother’s womb.I don’t remember being born(comming out into the world,or out of the womb)but my earliest memory after that was throwing my toy blocks down the heat vents.Im going to be 59 this summer and integer forgot.

I meant poof not poor and nothingness not nothing need and I never forgot not integer.I should have spell checked before I submitted .I am telling the honest truth about what I submitted.

Not to go on and on about this but I find it so amazing that I could understand and hear my parents and brothers and sisters talking and at the time there were 5 kids in family I’m the 7th child of nine children. 7 of 9 how ironic.We as a human species have more abilities than we use.We just don’t use those parts of our brain.

I can remember one years old

I barely remember anything before starting school, and even then, everything’s fuzzy. I have some clear memories, mostly from within the past 15 years, but the rest is fuzzy or just not there. Ah, the dual curse/blessing of ADD…

I’d love to hear from experts. I have phych backround as well as 20 years working with young children. I have always been interested in memory. Now, it’s my experience that a certain amount of trauma intoduced various stages of young development can often result in repressed memories along w/a slew of other emotional, social changes to typical development. I don’t like using terms like “abnormal”or “negative”. Not always negative. Or only becomes “negative” because not always dealt w/properly or in understanding way. I was born into a highly volatile home environment. I was always a quiet observer. Not shy. Just very selective & careful when it came to putting myself out there. I did not speak past “mama” & a few other individual words until nearly 2.5 years old. Not for lack of being able to. My earliest memories are very clear ,in depth, confirmed memories , noone spoke of the trauma in my home once trauma inducing person was removed. I did not admit these memories until well into adulthood. I knew before they were confirmed that they were not false memories. It was confirmed my earliest memory was before much earlier than I thought it was. I want to know if there are any studies that focus on effects of early trauma on memory, specifically making memory sharper & specifically on children who are born into trauma vs trauma being introduced after birth. Although there was intense trauma, also alot of love from my mom, for me this trauma was my normal. I am sure i fall out of most statistic group. But I have to think their are studies. If anyone has information on this I would be wildly intersted. Trauma is truama, but it’s also relative. The same exact trumatic situation can be much scarier to a 2 yr old experiencing it for 1st time at 2 than would be to another 2 yr old who has been experiencing it since birth. likely having heard certain amount in whom. The child who experiences that type of trauma from 2 -7 yrs old daily may be much more trumatized in cerain ways,even more stunted in certain ways than the child who knew that same trauma since birth to 7 yrs old. So it’s really that specification I have not had much luck finding studies on. What I’m interested in knowing if any exsist. Sharper memories very early age in children who since birth experienced high intense trauma for extended length of years. Please feel free to direct me to any. Thanks!

My first memory is getting baptised. I remember fitting in one hand of the priest, the sensation of loosing balance was like waking up. I’m not sure what I was thinking prior to that moment, and I can’t remember anything prior. It’s like that was when I woke up, and I have many memories since. Crawling on the floor, pre school, kindy, etc. I remember the exact moment the priest put a cross across my forehead and the drips of water in the corner of my eyes and running down my forehead. Mum says I was baptised at 6months of age.

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What do your earliest childhood memories say about you?

Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology, Macquarie University

Lecturer Clinical Psychology, University of Wollongong

Lecturer in Early Childhood, Macquarie University

Disclosure statement

Penny Van Bergen has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Amy Bird has received funding from the Health Research Council (New Zealand).

Rebecca Andrews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Wollongong and Macquarie University provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.

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We experience thousands of events across childhood, and yet as adults we recall only a handful. Some might be “firsts” (our first ice cream, our first day at school), or significant life events (the birth of a sibling, moving house). Others are surprisingly trivial.

So, what do your earliest childhood memories say about you? Do they reflect your early skill for remembering, your interests, or your individual experiences?

The answer to all three questions is yes – but this is not the whole story. Although we sometimes see memory as a video camera, recording our lives accurately and without bias, this is a myth .

Instead, our childhood memories are intricately shaped by our family and culture.

Read more: What outcomes parents should expect from early childhood education and care

Our first memories

If you can’t remember life as an infant, you’re not alone.

As adults looking back to childhood, we cannot typically recall anything before age 3-4 years . This phenomenon is known as infantile amnesia .

Although some individuals report very early memories of being walked in their pram as a baby, or falling asleep in a cot, these memories are likely to be fictional .

One of the most important developments for the onset of memory is language. Research shows that language is needed not just for sharing our experiences, but for encoding them.

For example, young children invited to use a fictional “magic shrinking machine” could only recall this one year later if they had the appropriate vocabulary at the time of the event.

We also know that bilingual adults who immigrated as children recall early memories in the language they spoke at the time the memory was formed.

In addition to language, children must also develop a coherent sense of self, or of “who I am”. This emerging development allows them to pin events to a personal story that is continuous across time. The sense that “this happened” develops into a deeper understanding that “this happened to me”.

Read more: Learning languages early is key to making Australia more multilingual

Family factors

While the development of language and sense of self enable our earliest childhood memories to form, family factors shape their contents.

Within families, parents reminisce with their children multiple times a day – reliving family holidays, for example, or bonding over sibling hijinks, or reflecting on past transgressions to discuss the lessons learned. Interestingly, however, there are strong individual differences in the way they do so.

Some parents use a highly “elaborative” reminiscing style : asking questions and providing event detail and structure in a way that scaffolds and encourages the child’s own contribution. Others are less elaborative.

Some parents also focus particularly on emotional content (“She was really sad! Why did she start crying?”), while others focus more on factual details.

These individual differences have important implications, with children eventually coming to adopt the personalised style of their parents: first during shared reminiscing conversations, and later in their own independent memories .

Read more: Parents can promote gender equality and help prevent violence against women. Here's how

What style of parent are you?

Here’s an example of a conversation between a highly elaborative mother and her pre-school aged child.

Mother: You and Daddy put the Christmas tree up together, and then you put on decorations! What decorations did you put on?

Child: Um… the Christmas balls!

Mother: That’s right! Daddy bought Christmas balls and stars to hang on the tree. What colours were they?

Child: Red and gold.

Mother: Red and gold. Pretty red balls, and gold stars.

Child: And there was the paper circles too.

In contrast, below is a conversation between a less elaborative mother and her preschool aged child.

Mother: I’m going to ask you about your preschool Christmas concert. Was that good?

Child: Yeah

Mother: What happened there?

Child: Dad came

Mother: Yes, but what happened?

Child: I don’t know.

Broader family structures and experiences also play a role. In Italy, children growing up in intergenerational households tend to have both earlier childhood memories and more childhood memories than children growing up in traditional nuclear families. This probably occurs due to more opportunities to engage in rich and elaborative reminiscing conversations.

In contrast, parents and children experiencing depression may show a tendency for “ overgeneral memory ” – that is, difficulty recalling specific memory details. Poorer quality parent-child reminiscing is related to overgeneral memory among three- to six-year-olds.

Read more: Essays on health: Australia is failing new parents with conflicting advice – it's urgent we get it right

Cultural factors

Just as our earliest childhood memories reflect our reminiscing conversations with our parents and our overarching family experiences, they also appear to reflect broader cultural practices and norms.

Consistent with the “individualist” values of Western culture, American college students’ earliest childhood memories are typically long, specific and self-focused.

Consistent with the “collectivist” values of Chinese culture, Chinese students’ earliest childhood memories are typically brief, and more likely to reference social responsibilities.

American mothers are also more likely than Chinese mothers to focus on their child’s own personal emotional experiences when remembering together, and it is likely that these early parent-child conversations serve as a mechanism for imparting cultural norms.

Read more: How children's picturebooks can disrupt existing language hierarchies

In New Zealand, where Māori culture includes a rich oral tradition in which stories are shared across generations, Māori mothers have been found to reminisce differently to Pākehā (European New Zealand) mothers about important life events. When talking with their children about their own birth stories, for example, Māori mothers include more elaborations, more references to emotion, and more references to relational time.

Interestingly, Māori also have the earliest average age of first memory on record. At 2.5, these earliest memories occur a full year earlier than in some other groups.

So the research is clear: our earliest childhood memories are intricately shaped by our experiences within our own families and cultures.

The process of memory formation is nothing like a video camera.

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Free essay samples, research paper examples and academic writing tips for students

Essay on My Earliest Childhood Memories

My earliest memories are that of playing games in preschool. It was a fun time for me, at least that’s how I recall it now. The only things I had to worry about were: what will I have for lunch today, whether that big kid will leave me alone and which toy do I want to play with. My mother would always pack one of those perfect lunches for me, although, being a bit of a health nut, she wouldn’t always give me the snacks that the other kids had. I guess it was this upbringing that has made me health-conscious when it comes to food. Buying organic for me is a bit out of my price range, but I maintain fresh ingredient standards, stay away from fast- and junk-foods and manage to balance my meals. I’ve recently become a fan of cooking shows on TV, which have inspired me to explore the culinary world a bit, but not on a professional level. When I come home, the first thing I like to do is cook a nice meal. I’m not a vegetarian, yet there are many vegetarian dishes to which I have become accustomed to. A lot of my cooking influences come from Middle-Eastern and Indian cuisine. On occasion, I like to have friends over to share my newfound talents with them, and so far it has been a success.

This might sound somewhat cliché, but each class had one of those bigger kids who was the bully. Most of the time I had no trouble with him, but when I did, that was when the trouble began. Never an instigator, I would defend myself when necessary, and everyone around me always knew that.

Growing-up, this reputation stuck with me. Being a physically active individual, I participated in many physically-demanding activities. It was sports that drove me to be a very competitive individual and my father’s insistence on playing sports, was welcomed by me from the start. I played baseball, basketball and football. Although I did suffer some minor injuries, I pushed myself to achieve faster, higher and farther goals every time I played. My teams had won many games, and I feel that my physical abilities as well as unfazed teamwork, contributed to our countless victories. I do not play sports that much today because I’m busy with work and school, but I do love to remain physically active. For instance, I usually get-up early in the morning and go for a three mile run, rain or shine. The area where I live, has some excellent areas for running, and I feel privileged to live there and use the terrain to my advantage. The summertime is the best, however, to go running. The warm, crisp, morning air, still recovering from the night before, is still free from all of the morning rush-hour smog. This is my fuel that drives me for the rest of the day until the next run.

These days, I have a bit more on my plate than just toys, lunches and bullies. It is surreal to one day wake-up and realize that the easiest part of life is over. Sure there are more fun things to do now, but they come with a world of responsibilities, and that is somewhat hard to adjust to. I’m starting to realize more and more about life every day. I’m glad that I have started to learn more and expand my horizons with respect to the school environment. New ideas and thoughts are constantly running through my head. The time during my run, I use to analyze and strategize my next moves in life. I’ve realized that the military is the best option for me in life right now. Not to get too political, but I believe myself to be a patriot and am ready to take any risk to guard the safety and security of our land. I try not to get myself involved too much in politics, because as I understand it, almost every war that the U.S. entered in the past, whether it was humane or not (war is never humane), had led it to victory. So, getting involved with any political climate right now, I think would be counterintuitive to what I want to make for myself. Our military has made it very easy to have a stable career, and I feel that to have a family in the future, a stable career is what is necessary for a normal American home. I guess this is where my current crossroads intersect. I have opted to go the military path and am waiting to see where it will take me. Of course it will be much more difficult than childhood, but at least the rewards will be much greater.

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Student Opinion

What Is Your Earliest Memory?

By Caroline Crosson Gilpin

• April 5, 2017

Ask a few friends, parents, siblings or teachers about their earliest memories.

How old were they when they remembered their earliest memory? And how old were they when the remembered event took place?

In “ Recalling Early Childhood Memories, or Not ,” C. Claiborne Ray writes:

Q. When four of us shared memories of our very young lives, not one of us could recall events before the age of 4 or possibly 3. Is this common? A. Yes. For adults, remembering events only after age 3½ or 4 is typical, studies have found . The phenomenon was named childhood amnesia by Freud and identified late in the 19th century by the pioneering French researcher Victor Henri and his wife, Catherine. The Henris published a questionnaire on early memories in 1895, and the results from 123 people were published in 1897. Most of the participants’ earliest memories came from when they were 2 to 4 years old; the average was age 3. Very few participants recalled events from the first year of life. Many subsequent studies found similar results.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

— Do you agree with the research that suggests the formation of children’s earliest memories are linked to when they begin talking about past events with a parent? Why or why not?

— Do you have any early memories? What are they? Did someone else confirm the memory, or do you have a photograph of it? How do you know it actually happened and wasn’t just a dream?

— How old were you when you remembered your earliest memory? And how old were you when the remembered event took place? What details do you recall?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

What’s Your Earliest Reading Memory? Tayari Jones Wants to Know

Abby Hargreaves

Abby Hargreaves is a New Hampshire native living and working as a Children’s Librarian in Washington, D.C. She fulfills the gamut of the librarian stereotype with a love of cats, coffee, and crocheting (and likes a good run of alliteration). Her MLIS degree enjoys the company of a BA in English from Hollins University, making Abby an advocate of women's universities. Her favorite color is yellow.

View All posts by Abby Hargreaves

Many of us enjoyed story time events at libraries, day care, and school growing up, but who remembers those moments? Maybe you recall a caregiver reading bedtime stories while you cuddled your favorite stuffed animal, listening to the adventures of the three pigs in “The Three Little Pigs.” Maybe your first grade teacher read from My Father’s Dragon over a period of weeks during circle time. Maybe the first time you remember someone reading to you was your best friend at college, who shared their favorite poems with you on perfect fall days on the quad. Or maybe your earliest memory of interacting with printed material was reading yourself! Whatever it was, it was certainly a magical time.

My parents both read to me frequently growing up, particularly at bedtime. Dad incorporated his own sound effects—in which I could choose to participate—into the Disney Little Golden Book edition of The Three Little Pigs . Mom favored 365 Bedtime Stories by Nan Gilbert, a copy of which I believe still sits in my parents house, flaking and falling apart, but still beloved. Now, my parents read to their grandchildren regularly, and I’ve developed a love of books over the years and become a children’s librarian, where I read at regular story times every week.

The first specific moment I recall, however, being read to was an instance when my dad decided to introduce my brother and me to The Hobbit . The two of us lay on my parents’ bedroom floor at the foot of their bed, while Dad opened the novel from his side of the bed, his nightstand light on in addition to the overhead light with the fan. Ethan and I lay quietly with our hands clasped under our heads while Dad painted pictures with his voice and Tolkien’s words. Of course, The Hobbit is not terribly well-suited to reading aloud. Tolkien’s winding and lengthy sentence structure can make for a tough follow-along, but it wasn’t about the story or the words—it was about spending time with my family, and a moment of my dad that I’ll remember and cherish forever.

There’s no doubt that reading and reading to children is paramount to their development , both cognitive and emotional. And while many of us were read to as children for the first time, some of us were adults when we first remember a significant moment of written words being read to us. When Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage , ( @tayari ) asked other Twitter users to share their earliest memories of reading or being read to , readers rose to the occasion. Here are some of the best responses to Jones’s question.

What is your earliest memory of reading or being read to? — Tayari Jones (@tayari) November 23, 2018

This reader remembers saying goodnight with Goodnight Moon .

My mom reading Good Night Moon to me every night. However, there is a pic of me at three sitting on the bed reading a newspaper. — … (@Prettybrains08) November 24, 2018

Kris learned about Patty Hearst through recitations of the Milwaukee Journal .

My foster father read the Milwaukee Journal out loud to me every day. I remember reading the words myself at about 4. I learned history, politics, health. I keenly remember reading about Pattie Hearst at 6. — Kris A. Newman (@KrisANewman) November 24, 2018

Wilhelmina describes the power of books even when there is a need and want for other things.

I can’t remember not reading. My father worked in NW DC and we lived in an apartment in NE. He rode the bus back and forth. Every day I would run down the hill to meet him and he would have a new book for me. Golden Books; Wonder Books. We had no car, but I had books. — Wilhelmina Jenkins (@minadjenkins) November 23, 2018

Crystal remembers her grandmother’s important role in her development.

My grandmother read to me so much that I could read on a third grade level in headstart. The beginning. — crystal wilkinson (@CrystalWilki) November 24, 2018

Sarah has had a TBR since as long as she can remember.

When I was around 2 I would take a stack of 10 or so books into my crib at nap time. Evidently I would flip through each one and then sleep, every day. — Sarah Randall (@cookcanread) November 23, 2018

Rene took on the role of reader for her brother.

https://twitter.com/ReneDenfeld/status/1066474011645767680

Genea is grateful for the love of reading her mother gave her via “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and her stellar voice acting abilities.

My mother reading 3 Billy Goats Gruff and doing the voices! It still brings a smile to my face over forty years later! Reading is an awesome gift. Thank you Mama! pic.twitter.com/iLukGvijNo — Genea Monroe (@gtmonroe1999) November 24, 2018

Tori shares her love for Mrs. Weiss, who read with her one-on-one.

In kindergarten I was a slow at learning how to read so I went to this program called Reading Recovery where kids learned to read 1 on 1 w/ a teacher. I still remember my teacher Mrs. Weiss who helped me learn to love books! — Tori Halligan (@notorioustdh) November 24, 2018

Drew had a similar experience to mine, involving Tolkein.

My Dad read me Tolkien before I could read. — Drew Johnson (@DrewalsoKermit) November 23, 2018

Hope, with a nod to libraries, recalls Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill .

Love this question. My best clear memory is reading the library copy of Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, and wanting to live in its world of friendship and adventure. — Hope Dellon (@hopedellon) November 24, 2018

Reading was and is magic with Miranda.

I distinctly remember reading Little Bear and feeling my brain soar for the first time. It was a magic trick that I was doing! I was four. We were living in rural Senegal. I was in the front room of our mud hut, sitting with my mama. My grandmother had sent the book from Ohio. — Miranda Beverly-Whittemore (@MirandaBW) November 24, 2018

Sometimes, it’s a single word that opens up the world.

I remember the first word I ever read on my own. It was WATER, printed on a drain in a Baltimore street. I was two years old, walking with my granddad. I can still remember how proud he was, and how happy it made me. I'll never let go of that memory. pic.twitter.com/W0ahlONpAq — JaysonElliot (@JaysonElliot) November 24, 2018

Food and books have a way of finding each other, as evidenced by Rosalie’s childhood memory.

You know it’s funny there must have been a time but I don’t remember NOT being able to read. I remember not being able to swim. I used to sit at the kitchen table and read to my mommy while she cooked. I was very young. — Rosalie Lee (@LeeMirandaLee) November 23, 2018

Ah, the importance of modeling the behavior we want to see in children.

https://twitter.com/thomaspluck/status/1066130347027517440

Lisa, like many of us, remembers mornings of cereal ingredients.

I’m dyslexic & couldn’t read independently until 5th grade. I remember sitting at the kitchen table & reading the ingredients on the cereal box w/no problem. — Lisa Nelson-Haynes (@momsamango) November 23, 2018

Harry Potter is sure to show up in many first-reading memories.

My mom reading Harry Potter to me and my siblings as a bedtime story <3 — Emily Polson 👻 (@emilycpolson) November 24, 2018

Monise, showing us all up with an early encounter with the encyclopedia.

Not earliest, though. I read encyclopedias as a kid. Damn nerd. 😂😂😂 — Monise L. Seward (@MoniseLSeward) November 24, 2018

Dr. Ken gets a hug of a memory in the form of nursery rhymes.

I remember my mother reading stories to me from this book as a kid. It’s a hug of a memory. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/EuA37EBmox — Dr. Ken Carter (@DrKenCarter) November 24, 2018

Reading, making caregivers proud since the beginning of time.

Mom caught me reading to myself. She got very excited when I sighed instead of reading the word. It was such a confidence boost. I've loved reading ever since. — The Ke (@Kakes_Murray) November 24, 2018

More library love!

My most vivid memory related to books was going to the Lorain Public Library with my mom, having my own card, and checking out a big stack of books. We rode our bikes there because we did not have a car. I loved going to the library with my mom. — Jane from Lorain (@LorainJane) November 23, 2018

Jenn took the lead in her family.

I’m reading to my Dad – circa 1982 (?) pic.twitter.com/r5hcEsGbfX — Jenn S (@jennstri) November 24, 2018

Letisha got her reading start with a Dr. Seuss classic.

Reading one fish two fish, red fish blue fish on my own for the first time! — Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown, PhD. (@letisha122) November 24, 2018

Sonia also got her start with Dr. Seuss, and a title mentioned many times in responses.

Learning how to read “Green Eggs & Ham” and actually being rewarded with green eggs and ham as a meal. — Sonia Hazard (@SRHazardATL) November 24, 2018

Spite reading is the best kind of reading.

I read the letters on the K-Mart sign from my car seat when I was 2 1/2. The reason I remember it is because my mother made me do it three times, then read some other letters on other signs as well, because she didn’t believe I was really reading. I was angry. — Hanne Blank (@hanneblank) November 24, 2018

Check out Tayari Jones’s thread to see other great responses and fond memories of books and reading. And tell us in the comments what your answer is!

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From left to right: Kristin, Dave, Dan, Dot and Sue. All photos kindly supplied by the author

The great forgetting

Our first three years are usually a blur and we don’t remember much before age seven. what are we hiding from ourselves.

by Kristin Ohlson   + BIO

I’m the youngest by far of five children. My mother was 35 when she conceived me in 1951, so chagrined by this chronological indiscretion that she tried to hide the pregnancy from her sister. My mortified oldest brother didn’t want to tell his high-school friends that a new baby was on the way, but it was a small town. Word spread.

My mother’s age and my late arrival in the family felt burdensome to me too, especially when I started school in 1957 and met my classmates’ mothers. They were still having babies! Still piling their children into cars and heading off to picnics at the river or hikes into the lava-capped, wild flower-rampant plateau outside town. They still had to mediate hair-pulling and toy-snatching. But by the time I started first grade, my siblings were gone, the oldest three to college and the youngest to a residential school four hours away, and we went from a very noisy household to a very quiet one.

My family has told me stories about those years before everything changed. How my oldest brother nicknamed me ‘Ubangi’ because my hair grew in tight fat curls close to my head. How my other brother liked to ambush me around corners with a toy crocodile because it never failed to make me shriek in terror. How my oldest sister carried me around like a kangaroo with her joey. But I can offer very few stories of my own from those early years.

My strongest recollection is a constant straining to be with my brothers and sisters. I remember having to go to bed when it was still light out, kicking at the sheets as I listened for their voices coming down the hall or through the windows from the back yard. Sometimes I could smell popcorn. The next morning, I’d search the living room rug for their leftovers and roll the unpopped kernels around in my mouth. I do remember that, probably because it was something that played out night after night – our father loved popcorn.

Several years ago, I thought I might have the chance to recover that lost past when we were all tightly clustered together in one house. My brothers had driven to Bucks Lake up in the Sierras of northeastern California where, until I was around three years old, our family had leased a house every summer to escape the Sacramento Valley heat. They found our old cabin unchanged. Even a table built by a local sawmill was still in the living room. They knocked on the door and, weirdly enough, my younger brother knew the current lessee. He invited them in and then invited the rest of us back for a look.

With our father, we set off a few months later, up highways that narrowed into dusty roads through dark pines and past bright stony summits. When we got to the cabin, my siblings scattered to claim their favourite outdoor spots, but I was rooted near the car, struck by how much this place differed from what I thought I remembered.

I recalled that the water was a long walk across a sandy beach from the house; I had an image of my mother standing on that wide beach, her dress whipped by the wind, her hand cupped near her mouth. But the pebbled shoreline was just a few feet away. I recalled the spine of a dam jutting from the water not far from the house, a perilous and sudden cliff at the edge of the lake that my siblings had once ventured too close to. But even though the lake is a man-made one, the dam wasn’t visible from the house. I followed my father inside, where the tininess of the kitchen fascinated him. He kept opening cabinet doors and laughing as they banged each other in the narrow aisle. ‘Mother just hated this kitchen!’ he said. ‘She always made big breakfasts – eggs and sausage and pancakes – and as soon as she finished cleaning up, you kids would come running back in the house wanting lunch.’

I didn’t remember that. I didn’t remember the table. I didn’t remember anything about the place. My siblings tugged me through the house, pointing out where everyone had slept – they said I had been in a little alcove in the hallway, though I recalled staying in my parents’ room and watching them sleep in the early morning light. They pointed out other features tied to the life that we all lived in the cabin, eager for me to remember, but there was nothing. I even dropped to my knees and circled the living room at toddler level, peering at dusty windowsills and sniffing at the knotholes in the pine walls and running my fingers over the floorboards. Nothing.

I now know that it would have been unusual for me to remember anything from that time. Hardly any adult does. There is even a term for this – childhood amnesia, coined by Sigmund Freud in 1910 – to describe the lack of recall adults have of their first three or four years and our paucity of solid memories until around the age of seven. There has been some back and forth over a century of research about whether memories of these early years are tucked away in some part of our brains and need only a cue to be recovered. That’s what I was hoping when I revisited our old cabin with my siblings. I intended to jostle out a recalcitrant memory with the sights, sounds, smells and touch of the place. But research suggests that the memories we form in these early years simply disappear.

Freud argued that we repress our earliest memories because of sexual trauma but, until the 1980s, most researchers assumed that we retained no memories of early childhood because we created no memories – that events took place and passed without leaving a lasting imprint on our baby brains. Then in 1987, a study by the Emory University psychologist Robyn Fivush and her colleagues dispelled that misconception for good, showing that children who were just 2.5 years old could describe events from as far as six months into their past.

But what happens to those memories? Most of us assume that we can’t recall them as adults because they’re just too far back in our past to tug into the present, but this is not the case. We lose them when we’re still children.

The psychologist Carole Peterson of Memorial University of Newfoundland has conducted a series of studies to pinpoint the age at which these memories vanish. First, she and her colleagues assembled a group of children between the ages of four and 13 to describe their three earliest memories. The children’s parents stood by to verify that the memories were, indeed, true, and even the very youngest of the children could recall events from when they were around two years old.

if the memory was a very emotional one, children were three times more likely to retain it two years later

Then the children were interviewed again two years later to see if anything had changed. More than a third of those age 10 and older retained the memories they had offered up for the first study. But the younger children – especially the very youngest who had been four years old in the first study – had gone largely blank. ‘Even when we prompted them about their earlier memories, they said: “No, that never happened to me,”’ Peterson told me. ‘We were watching childhood amnesia in action.’

In both children and adults, memory is bizarrely selective about what adheres and what falls away. In one of her papers, Peterson trots out a story about her own son and a childhood memory gone missing. She had taken him to Greece when he was 20 months old, and, while there, he became very excited about some donkeys. There was family discussion of those donkeys for at least a year. But by the time he went to school, he had completely forgotten about them. He was queried when he was a teenager about his earliest childhood memory and, instead of the remarkable Greek donkeys, he recalled a moment not long after the trip to Greece when a woman gave him lots of cookies while her husband showed the boy’s parents around a house they planned to buy.

Peterson has no idea why he would remember that – it was a completely unremarkable moment and one that the family hadn’t reinforced with domestic chitchat. To try to get a handle on why some memories endure over others, she and her colleagues studied the children’s memories again. They concluded that if the memory was a very emotional one, children were three times more likely to retain it two years later. Dense memories – if they understood the who, what, when, where and why – were five times more likely to be retained than disconnected fragments. Still, oddball and inconsequential memories such as the bounty of cookies will hang on, frustrating the person who wants a more penetrating look at their early past.

T o form long-term memories, an array of biological and psychological stars must align, and most children lack the machinery for this alignment. The raw material of memory – the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations of our life experiences – arrive and register across the cerebral cortex, the seat of cognition. For these to become memory, they must undergo bundling in the hippocampus, a brain structure named for its supposed resemblance to a sea horse, located under the cerebral cortex. The hippocampus not only bundles multiple input from our senses together into a single new memory, it also links these sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations to similar ones already stored in the brain. But some parts of the hippocampus aren’t fully developed until we’re adolescents, making it hard for a child’s brain to complete this process.

‘So much has to happen biologically to store a memory,’ the psychologist Patricia Bauer of Emory University told me. There’s ‘a race to get it stabilised and consolidated before you forget it. It’s like making Jell-O: you mix the stuff up, you put it in a mould, and you put it in the refrigerator to set, but your mould has a tiny hole in it. You just hope your Jell-O – your memory – gets set before it leaks out through that tiny hole.’

In addition, young children have a tenuous grip on chronology. They are years from mastering clocks and calendars, and thus have a hard time nailing an event to a specific time and place. They also don’t have the vocabulary to describe an event, and without that vocabulary, they can’t create the kind of causal narrative that Peterson found at the root of a solid memory. And they don’t have a greatly elaborated sense of self, which would encourage them to hoard and reconsider chunks of experience as part of a growing life-narrative.

Frail as they are, children’s memories are then susceptible to a process called shredding. In our early years, we create a storm of new neurons in a part of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus and continue to form them throughout the rest of our lives, although not at nearly the same rate. A recent study by the neuroscientists Paul Frankland and Sheena Josselyn of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto suggests that this process, called neurogenesis, can actually create forgetting by disrupting the circuits for existing memories.

the mother engages the child in a lively conversation about events, always passing the baton of remembering back to the child

Our memories can become distorted by other people’s memories of the same event or by new information, especially when that new information is so similar to information already in storage. For instance, you meet someone and remember their name, but later meet a second person with a similar name, and become confused about the name of the first person. We can also lose our memories when the synapses that connect neurons decay from disuse. ‘If you never use that memory, those synapses can be recruited for something different,’ Bauer told me.

Memories are less vulnerable to shredding and disruptions as the child grows up. Most of the solid memories that we carry into the rest of our lives are formed during what’s called ‘the reminiscence bump’, from ages 15 to 30, when we invest a lot of energy in examining everything to try to figure out who we are. The events, culture and people of that time remain with us and can even overshadow the features of our ageing present, according to Bauer. The movies were the best back then, and so was the music, and the fashion, and the political leaders, and the friendships, and the romances. And so on.

Of course, some people have more memories from early childhood than others do. It appears that remembering is partly influenced by the culture of family engagement. A 2009 study conducted by Peterson together with Qi Wang of Cornell and Yubo Hou of Peking University found that children in China have fewer of these memories than children in Canada. The finding, they suggest, might be explained by culture: Chinese people prize individuality less than North Americans and thus may be less likely to spend as much time drawing attention to the moments of an individual’s life. Canadians, by contrast, reinforce recollection and keep the synapses that underlie early personal memories vibrant. Another study, by the psychologist Federica Artioli and colleagues at the University of Otago in New Zealand in 2012, found that young adults from Italian extended families had earlier and denser memories than those from Italian nuclear families, presumably as a result of more intense family reminiscence.

But it doesn’t necessarily take a crowd of on-site relatives to enhance a child’s recollection. Bauer’s research also points to ‘maternal deflections of conversation’, meaning that the mother (or another adult) engages the child in a lively conversation about events, always passing the baton of remembering back to the child and inviting him or her to contribute to the story. ‘That kind of interaction contributes to the richness of memory over a long period of time,’ Bauer told me. ‘It doesn’t predict whether a given event will be remembered, but it builds a muscle. The child learns how to have memories and understands what part to share. Over the course of these conversations, the child learns how to tell the story.’

B orrowing Bauer’s Jello-O analogy, I’ve always suspected that my mother had a tinier hole in her Jell-O mould than mine, which allowed her to retain information until it was set into memory. She seemed to remember everything from my childhood, from my siblings’ childhoods, and from her own first six years. Intensely, she recalled the fight between her mother and father, when her mother wound up getting knocked out cold and her father forced her to tell visiting neighbours that his wife was sleeping. The day my grandmother packed up my mother and her sister and moved them from Nebraska to Nevada, with their unwanted household goods strewn across their lawn for the townspeople to pick through and haggle over. The day the doctor took out my mother’s appendix on the kitchen table. The day she wet her pants at school and the nuns made her walk home in weather so cold that her underwear froze. I wondered if her memories were so sharp because these were all terrible events, especially compared with my presumably bland early years.

I now suspect that my mother’s ability to tell the story of her early life also came from the constellation of people clustered at the centre of it. Her young mother, bolting from a marriage she was pressured into and retreating to her brother’s crowded house, her two girls held close. And her sister, three years older, always the point and counterpoint, the question and response. My mother and her sister talked their lives over to such an extent that it must have seemed as if things didn’t really happen unless they had confided them to each other. Thus, ‘Don’t tell Aunt Helen!’ was whispered in our house when something went wrong, echoed by ‘Don’t tell Aunt Kathleen!’ in our cousins’ house when something went amiss there.

I might have a very large hole in my Jell-O mould, but I also wonder if our family’s storytelling and memory-setting apparatus had broken down by the time I came along. My brothers and sisters doted on me – I’m told this and I believe it – but it was their job to be out in the world riding horses and playing football and winning spelling bees and getting into various kinds of trouble, not talking to the baby. And sometime between my being born and my siblings leaving, our mother suffered a breakdown that plunged her into 20 years of depression and agoraphobia. She could go to the grocery store only with my father close to her side, steering the cart, list in hand. Even when she went to the beauty salon to have her hair cut and styled and sprayed into submission, my father sat next to her reading his Wall Street Journal as she cured under one of those bullet-head dryers. When we were home, she spent a lot of time in her room. No one really knows when my mother’s sadness and retreat from the world began – and she’s not around to tell us now – but it might have started when I was very young. What I remember is silence.

Our first three to four years are the maddeningly, mysteriously blank opening pages to our story of self. As Freud said, childhood amnesia ‘veils our earliest youth from us and makes us strangers to it’. During that time, we transition from what my brother-in-law calls ‘a loaf of bread with a nervous system’ to sentient humans. If we can’t remember much of anything from those years – whether abuse or exuberant cherishing – does it matter what actually happened? If a tree fell in the forest of our early development and we didn’t have the brains and cognitive tools to stash the event in memory, did it still help shape who we are?

I don’t remember, but I can choose to imagine myself on my siblings’ laps as they read me stories or sang me songs

Bauer says yes. Even if we don’t remember early events, they leave an imprint on the way we understand and feel about ourselves, other people, and the greater world, for better or worse. We have elaborate concepts about birds, dogs, lakes and mountains, for example, even if we can’t recall the experiences that created those concepts. ‘You can’t remember going ice-skating with Uncle Henry, but you understand that skating and visiting relatives are fun,’ Bauer explained. ‘You have a feeling for how nice people are, how reliable they are. You might never be able to pinpoint how you learnt that, but it’s just something you know.’

And we are not the sum of our memories, or at least, not entirely. We are also the story we construct about ourselves, our personal narrative that interprets and assigns meaning to the things we do remember and the things other people tell us about ourselves. Research by the Northwestern University psychologist Dan McAdams, author of The Redemptive Self (2005), suggests that these narratives guide our behaviour and help chart our path into the future. Especially lucky are those of us with redemptive stories, in which we find good fortune even in past adversity.

So our stories are not bald facts etched on stone tablets. They are narratives that move and morph, and that’s the underpinning to much of talk therapy. And here is one uplifting aspect of ageing: our stories of self get better. ‘For whatever reason, we tend to accentuate the positive things more as we age,’ McAdams told me. ‘We have a greater willingness or motivation to see the world in brighter terms. We develop a positivity bias regarding our memories.’

I can’t make myself remember my early life with my siblings nearby and my mother before her breakdown, even if I revisit the mountain idyll where the summers of that life unfolded. But I can employ the kinder lens of ageing and the research by these memory scientists to limn a story on those blank pages that is not stained with loss.

I am by nature trusting and optimistic, traits that I’ve sometimes worried are signs of intellectual weakness, but I can choose to interpret them as approaches to the world developed by myriad, if unrecalled, experiences with a loving family in those early years. I don’t remember, but I can choose to imagine myself on my siblings’ laps as they read me stories or sang me songs or showed me the waving arms of a crawdad from that mountain lake. I can imagine myself on their shoulders, fingers twined in their curly Ohlson hair.

I can imagine them patiently feeding me the lines to The Night Before Christmas , over and over, hour after hour, day after day, because someone had to have done it – my mother told me that I could recite the whole poem when I was two years old. Not that they remember doing this, because most of them were teenagers by then and off having the kinds of encounters with people and culture that would define their sense of self for years to come. But I’ll imagine and reconstruct it, both for me and for them. Because our pasts had to have had a lot of that kind of sweetness, given our lucky loving bonds today. We’ve just forgotten the details.

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PEGGY
- Sunday, July 16, 2000 at 00:14:22 (PDT)

• Relationships

What Your Earliest Food Memories Say About You

New research shows how childhood food memories affect your relationships now..

Posted August 19, 2017

Everyone has childhood memories of family meals, ranging from holiday gatherings to the ordinary breakfasts, lunches, and dinners served around the kitchen table. Perhaps your mother had a flair for preparing Sunday morning blueberry pancakes, or your father was a pro at making Thursday night grilled cheese sandwiches. From pleasant conversations to painful tension and arguments, family meals run the full emotional gamut. Without realizing it, these emotional memories, associated with both the food you ate and the atmosphere in which you ate it, have become part of your adult sense of self. In a recently published study, Elisabeth von Essen and Fredrika Mårtensson (2017), of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, examined the relationship between food memories from one's early years with resilience in young adulthood. The Swedish team believed that the positive associations between food and family help establish a strong base on which future coping skills are built.

An intriguing notion that von Essen and Mårtensson point out is that food choices and meals serve to tell the much larger part of the story of who we are and how our lives have developed. Being a vegan can become a central aspect of your sense of self, but so too are the food habits and customs you learned through your family. Moreover, as the authors observe, “different dishes and meals help to add rhythm to everyday life…” and “preparing, cooking, and serving food is … an ‘unexpressed intimacy ’” (p. 210).

You can probably relate to these concepts in terms of your current relationships. Do you and your partner spend a considerable amount of your time together around the kitchen counter while you chop, snip, and saute? Is sitting down to a long and luxurious dinner a high point of your evening? Or are you and your family more utilitarian, using meals as a chance to refuel and go on to the next event in your busy life? How you spend your food-related times together defines a key element of your relationships. You may have even sought a partner who shares your views on food, cooking, and mealtimes, or at least come to accommodate to your partner’s if you feel that your relationship would otherwise suffer.

The Swedish researchers proposed that it is those attitudes toward food derived from your memories of your earlier experiences that have a bearing not only on how you and your partner spend time together, but more deeply on your sense of security in relationships. Attachment theory, the framework adopted by the authors, proposes that the “secure base” you form in infancy provides you with the greatest resilience toward the challenges you face as you develop into adulthood and beyond. However, you can still bounce back from early difficulties when your identity begins to develop in the transition to adulthood. It's when you start to establish supportive relationships with your friends and new romantic partners that you can overcome earlier difficulties. You may look differently at your parents and be able, as they note, to “re-evaluate a negative role model.” Food can help you navigate that process and, as they state, “act as a buffer against uncomfortable memories” (p. 211).

To test their ideas about the use of food memories by young adults to help create a life narrative, the authors conducted an intensive analysis based on food memory interviews of a sample of 30 young adults ranging from 18 to 35 years old. The three participants whose interviews were chosen for in-depth analysis were on a vegetarian or organic diet , or alternated between vegetarian food and meat. The authors delved into the material by attempting to elicit the narrative, or life story, that the participants told about themselves in relation to food. In the interviews, participants were asked to describe major turning points in their lives and then to describe their relationship to food before and after the turning point. Each of the three narratives then became an illustration of how food and attachment became connected for the participant.

The first narrative involved “using food as a secure base.” The participant whose interview fit this pattern told of how the soup with bread he cooked and ate with his mother became associated with security and togetherness. He returned to his memories of these good times when sharing meals with his adult friends, and he still recalled fondly the times he spent in the kitchen helping his mother prepare these simple but nourishing meals.

A second participant, by contrast, had a rocky history with food, having experimented with a number of extreme dietary fads. In childhood, she had grown up eating anything that could be microwaved, having a mother who worked nights and a father who was an alcoholic . When she herself became a mother, she was concerned about providing her own son with a healthier and more stable diet. She reported that, after a great deal of struggle, she was eventually able to feel good about her eating habits. Nevertheless, she feels she’s still too preoccupied with food, and that it takes too much of her energy. This pattern reflects what in attachment theory is known as the anxious /ambivalent style. People who experience this approach in their adult relationships similarly can be preoccupied and uncertain of their partner's love.

The third participant, reflecting a more dismissive attachment style, also had a dismissive attitude toward food. She experienced an eating disorder in adolescence in response to a childhood characterized by the separation and divorce of her parents. As she entered young adulthood, she moved in with her boyfriend whose attitude toward food was very different from hers. He expected to eat “proper meals” on a regular schedule and to spend time together both cooking and eating those meals. She was currently, as the authors noted, struggling to overcome her tendency to downplay both food and romantic feelings toward her partner; in other words, “to figure out how to integrate food with the new life situation including a partner” (p. 214).

This study, though small in scope, shows the role that food, and your memories of food, can play as you navigate your own life experiences. Think back on your own earliest memories of the meals you ate as a child and also, as importantly, to the emotional associations you have to those meals. Did you feel that mealtime brought you together with the important people in your life, or were they those hurried affairs in which you microwaved food that came out of a box? When have you used food to help comfort you during periods of stress ? Or was food always a source of stress, so that you try to focus as little as possible on the meals you prepare? How do your feelings toward food play out in your closest relationships now, and particularly in the way that you and your partner negotiate mealtimes?

Your food memories can sustain and influence your psychological as well as your physical well-being. If those memories are painful ones, the findings of von Essen and Mårtensson suggest that it’s never too late to rework them into a story with a happier ending.

Follow me on Twitter @swhitbo for daily updates on psychology, health, and aging. Feel free to join my Facebook group, " Fulfillment at Any Age ," to discuss today's blog, or to ask further questions about this posting.

Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne 2017

von Essen, E., & Mårtensson, F. (2017). Young adults' use of emotional food memories to build resilience. Appetite , 112210-218. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2017.01.036

Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. , is a Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her latest book is The Search for Fulfillment.

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At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that could derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face triggers with less reactivity and get on with our lives.

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• Life Skills

Forgot where you put the keys? Experts (and a trivia buff) share tips to boost memory

Andee Tagle

Margaret Cirino

Where did I put the keys? Tips to improve memory

Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images hide caption

You don't have to be a trivia buff to be great at remembering things.

Monica Thieu , a four-time Jeopardy! contestant and winner of the game's 2012 college championship, uses memory techniques like mnemonic devices and flash cards to retain world capitals, TV shows, Olympic cities and more.

"With practice, absolutely everyone can make their memory stronger," says Thieu, who also researches memory, human cognition and emotion as a postdoctoral scientist at Emory University.

Listen to the podcast episode: Where did I put the keys? Tips to improve memory

That's because memory is selective. What our brains choose to remember is something we can train, says Charan Ranganath , director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis, and author of Why We Remember . "It can be biased, warped and reconstructed."

If you want to improve your memory, even if it's just remembering where you parked or where you put your keys, try these science-backed strategies from our experts.

Pay attention to what you want to remember

"The first necessary ingredient in creating a memory that lasts longer than the present moment is attention," says Lisa Genova , a neuroscientist and the author of Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting . "We need that input — otherwise that memory doesn’t get made, even if your eyes see it."

When people gripe about having memory problems, they're often having attention problems, she adds. For example, if you blame your memory because you can't find your parking spot, you probably weren't paying attention to it in the first place. So slow down and focus on what you want to remember.

Don't always depend on GPS. Your sense of direction will thank you

Create a rule and a habit.

If you repeatedly lose track of an object like your keys, wallet or cellphone, pick a designated spot in your home and keep it there when it's not in use, says Genova. That way, you don't have to expend effort trying to remember where you placed it.

"If you put it in the same place every time, you've made it [a fact], sort of like your address and birthday: My keys always go in this bowl. There's a rule and a habit," she says.

The more details the merrier

To form memories you'll naturally keep, make them as immersive as possible, says Thieu. This is especially helpful when you're tackling a subject that you find difficult to connect with.

Let's say you're trying to learn more about the Renaissance era. Commit the period to memory by absorbing information about it through a variety of mediums, says Thieu. Make a playlist of music from the era. Watch period dramas set at that time. And "any time you have an opportunity to learn something in a richer way, do it" — like going to a theater performance on the subject matter.

Our brains love to remember anything that's "meaningful, emotional, surprising or new," says Genova. So the more details you can give your brain to latch onto, the stronger that a memory becomes and the easier it is to recall later.

For relationship advice (plus health, finance and parenting tips and more),  subscribe to Life Kit’s newsletter .

Trigger your memory

When your brain creates a memory, it naturally weaves together all the sights, sounds, tastes and smells associated with that memory, says Genova. So use those connections to your advantage.

Let's say you're studying for a vocabulary test. If you always listen to Dua Lipa while you're studying and "have a chance to listen to Dua Lipa while you take the test, it might help you remember those words," says Genova. Psychologists call this process "context-dependent memory."

Genova suggests enhancing your study space with smells, music or certain tastes. Try chewing a piece of cinnamon gum, for example, while you're preparing for a big exam — and then again while you're taking it. Your senses can act as triggers for the rest of your memory to fall into place.

Negotiating isn't just for job offers. Here's how to use it in everyday life

"chunk" long strings of information.

If you have a big load of information to recall at once, Ranganath suggests a strategy that researchers call " chunking ." It's a way to organize longer strings of information to make them easier to recall. Let's say you want to remember the phone number (130) 555-1212. "That’s 10 digits, which is a lot to juggle around in my mind."

So "chunk" it into three parts, he says: 130, 555, 1212. Instead of recalling each number individually, you can recall the entire group — and then retrieve each individual number more easily.

Create a "mind palace"

Need to remember to grab eggs, milk and coffee creamer from the store? Ranganath suggests a method that memory researchers, as well as memory champions, call a "mind palace" — or the method of loci , which means "places" in Latin. You may have seen this ancient mnemonic device on TV shows like Sherlock .

This technique allows you to pair a place you know well, like your childhood home, with new information. Picture yourself placing the items of your grocery list around the house. Place a carton of eggs on your couch. Put milk on the kitchen counter. Put some creamer on the coffee table. Later on at the supermarket, recall this path through your house as you're shopping. It'll help you remember your grocery list.

How to start a new habit: think small

Try good old flash cards.

Don't overlook the power of reviewing flash cards, says Thieu. "Some of the best trivia experts I know do a lot of flash-carding."

Thieu likes to watch old Jeopardy! reruns and create flash cards for the information in each episode. Then, she'll use the cards to quiz herself. She also uses this technique to drill lists of more specific trivia information — say, the world's longest rivers or deepest lakes.

Take your flash-carding one step further by testing yourself before you learn the information, to see what you already know, and then afterward to see what you were able to remember. A pre-lesson test primes your brain for what you'll need to recall later on.

"We learn the most when we challenge ourselves — and that's an extraordinarily powerful tool for retaining information in the long run," says Ranganath.

Go easy on yourself

Lastly, don't expect your memory to be perfect, say our experts. It's normal to occasionally misplace your keys or forget to pay a bill.

"Life is an open-book test," says Genova. You're not cheating if you look something up or write it down. It could save your mental energy for something more meaningful.

The audio portion of this episode was produced by Margaret Cirino. The digital story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at [email protected].

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify , and sign up for our newsletter .

Argument: The Greatest Generation Had Queer Veterans, Too

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The Greatest Generation Had Queer Veterans, Too

Biden’s pardon of gay soldiers is just one part of acknowledging untold stories..

• United States

It has been nearly three decades since Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation , cemented the fame of the World War II generation. Popular screen adaptations—such as Band of Brothers and The Pacific —have perpetuated an idealized image of bravery, masculinity, and virtue. It is easy for the United States to wander into the nostalgia trap of what Elizabeth Samet calls “the good war.” Fewer and fewer veterans of the “good war” are still with us, and the imagined past and presumptions increasingly shape our image of the war and the lessons that we draw from it.

In the popular telling, the Greatest Generation is white, male, and straight. Tom Hanks’s Playtone studios, which produced some of the most popular adaptations of World War II history over the past 30 years, has played a key role in simplifying and flattening our understanding of the era.

In reality, the picture was far more complicated—and the role of the United States government was more painful. President Joe Biden’s pardon this week of soldiers who were court-martialed and convicted for same-sex relations is the start of acknowledging that painful history. It’s easy to imagine the war as a crusade that united American innocence and manhood. But both historical memory and pop history should be able to accommodate the fact that even as the federal government was hunting and purging queer Americans from uniform, from the intelligence services, and from the diplomatic corps, those same Americans answered the nation’s call despite real risks and real threats from their own democratic government.

Almost a decade before the 1998 release of The Greatest Generation , Allan Bérubé’s Coming Out Under Fire told a richer and more accurate story to widespread acclaim. As the U.S. government called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the increasing presence of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in the military conflicted with expanding anti-gay policies and procedures. Even as they created justifications for why gay people could not function within the armed forces, military officials knew that they could not afford to exclude most gay recruits.

At the same time, the gay men who enlisted or were drafted—and the lesbians who volunteered—realized that the military was both prepared to discharge them on the basis of their homosexuality and would make it known to the public .

And yet, like most Americans, they were eager to do their part in the war effort. Awareness of these policies placed them in a bind. Interviews, diaries, love letters, and declassified documents describe a two-front war: one on behalf of the United States and one within the armed forces, similar in some ways to the experiences of the African Americans and Japanese Americans who served.

From its inception, the United States military took punitive measures against gay servicemembers. One account from the Revolutionary War describes how an officer of the Continental Army who was outed by a fellow officer, then court-martialed for sodomy, convicted, and dishonorably discharged. Although “homosexuality” or “sodomy” weren’t explicitly mentioned in military law for more than a century afterward, the military maintained a de facto practice of discharging servicemembers for such conduct throughout the 19th century. However, during World War II, it became difficult to hold court-martials, so some commanders started issuing administrative discharges instead.

As the war continued, policies shifted, resulting in a 1944 directive that called for homosexuals to be committed to military hospitals, examined by psychiatrists, and discharged under Section 8 of the U.S. Army Regulations as “unfit for service.” Estimates across the uniformed services in 1946 indicate that somewhere between 54,000-72,000 blue tickets were issued during World War II, making it difficult, if not impossible, to reintegrate into civilian life.

Despite this, queer people wanted to do their part. , Chuck Rowland, one of the founders of the pioneering gay rights group, the Mattachine Society, attempted to enlist in the Marine Corps with his boyfriend in Cleveland in 1942 under the mistaken belief that the service had a “buddy system” that would keep them together. His eyesight was poor, preventing him from enlisting, and he was later drafted into the Army, serving until 1946.

Rowland was one of thousands. In 1943, Charles Reddy, a gay teenager, dropped out of high school in New Jersey to join the Marine Corps. Betty Somers joined the United States Marine Corps in 1944, just a few months after the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was established. At the time, she was 20 years old, in college, and had a girlfriend. “The Marine Corps is known for being a rather aggressive unit, so I went into the Marine Corps for that reason,” she later explained in an interview with Bérubé, the historian. “I expected to make any kind of sacrifices, and I expected to go overseas.”

During the height of the AIDS crisis—and just one year after the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy was announced—Bérubé’s account of the war was adapted into a Peabody Award-winning documentary. Now, at a moment when approval rates among Americans for same-sex marriage at an all-time high , but the future of open LGBTQIA+ military service is under threat , integrating these stories into popular culture is more vital than ever.

A group of gay veterans march past the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 1993. Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images

That would also counter a worrying current trend; in every Playtone adaptation of history and memoir released, more and more screen time is given over to an ever-increasing strident insistence on masculinity and heterosexuality. The Pacific detours into a tedious, gauzy wartime romance that fails to pass the Bechdel Test . While Masters of the Air has more women characters than any other series produced by the studio, it centers on an extensive and adulterous affair. If Playtone has determined that viewers will be comfortable with an admission of adultery in the Greatest Generation, then it’s past time to include the stories of queer Americans who served in uniform during World War II. If recent polling of Gen Z is reflected in their antecedents in the Greatest Generation, that would mean that there were 4.8 LGBTQIA+ veterans of that war.

Integrating these stories is crucial for more than just verisimilitude and the accuracy of documentary evidence; much more importantly, it makes for better film and television. It demonstrates a richer and more complex love of country and hatred of fascism when people choose to lie and do moral injury to themselves in order to serve. These Americans faced the very real risk of being outed at any point in the induction process or on active duty, which would destroy their lives and social standing through harassment and undesirable discharges.

For those who were not forcibly outed, getting in and living under the threat of being found out meant maintaining deception. For example, Bérubé interviewed, Robert Fleischer of the Upper West Side, who lied to an Army psychiatrist about his sexual orientation so he could enlist to avenge the death of a cousin killed at Pearl Harbor, left home for the first time, lost his virginity, fell in love, and became a drag star as “Carmelita Ack-Ack,” all the while living in fear of being forcibly outed and given a less than honorable discharge. He later used his G.I. Bill benefits to go to fashion school, dying in 1985.

Can the U.N. Protect Queer Rights?

The organization is struggling with a resurgence of global bigotry.

If Hollywood were to look beyond Bérubé for future material, one such source for adaptation from this era would be The Gallery by John Horne Burns, a graduate of Andover and Harvard University who taught at a prestigious prep school before serving in military intelligence for the U.S. Army in North Africa and Italy. His semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1947, depicts nine Americans serving in and around Naples in 1944, constantly moving in and out of the bombed-out arcade of the Galleria Umberto. In this setting, everyone in town comes together seeking food, drink, sex, money, and oblivion.

It was one of the first novels to directly explore gay life in the military. Among its nine portraits is Momma, the proprietress of a gay bar in the Galleria, a generous depiction of how gay men from every branch of service and every nation in the alliance come together to drink, flirt, and find sexual and romantic connections. This warm and accurate depiction of gay culture was scandalous and brave. It was scandalous because it was an overt and positive depiction of homosexuality—and because Momma endorsed her patrons’ sexuality.

“In 1947, homophobia was rampant both in Italy (where the fascist regime had targeted gay men just a few years before) and the United States (where nearly all constituencies had laws against sodomy), and the Hayes Code—Hollywood’s policy of self-censorship, which pushed most depictions of queer people out of movies for decades—was barely a decade old. State and federal obscenity laws were still widely in effect; the year before, Gore Vidal’s gay bildungsroman The City and the Pillar was denied reviews, and Vidal was driven out of polite society, forcing him to publish under a pseudonym for much of the next decade. So the clear, honest, and humane depictions of gay soldiers, sailors, marines, and “airplane drivers” from across the world as complex individuals—rather than not sexless sissies or defective, dangerous deviants—would have amounted to confession by the author of his own queerness.

Despite the obvious controversy, Burns’s portrait slid by unremarked, first by the lawyers for the publisher and the editor and then by the literary press. In some circles, it was seen as a contender for the 1948 Pulitzer Prize, and Burns became a celebrity even as he lost to James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific .

Burns published three subsequent novels, none of which was met with the same sort of popular acclaim, and proceeded to drink himself to death in Italy in the early 1950s. A man who was once viewed by Vidal and other queer men of his generation as a rival for accolades and a major literary talent faded into obscurity after his death. His family refused to believe that he was gay, and even after the Stonewall uprising in 1969, they declined to give scholars, writers, and thinkers access to his letters and archives.

Military veterans march along the Pride parade route, moving from Meridian Hill Park to Dupont Circle, in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 1991.

Or take The Brick Foxhole by Richard Brooks. The original novel, which evaded wartime and other censors, examines a group of soldiers stationed in a military barracks in the eastern United States during World War II. It is a fascinating, well-developed look at homophobia, racism, and antisemitism among the Greatest Generation. The plot hinges on an anti-gay hate crime—but in its far more famous noir film adaptation, renamed as Crossfire , that plot point had to be changed to an antisemitic killing.

In the novel, Keeley—a hardened military reporter who takes on the role of the private investigator—observes that “many of the men who had fought on Eniwetok and Kwajalein and Guadalcanal had peculiar ideas about liberty and freedom which sounded like white supremacy and Protestant justice. The Americans’ skill and ability to fire artillery had helped him win … not the desire to free a handful of natives in the Solomons and on New Georgia.”

On its publication in 1945, the book led to the court martial of its author, Brooks; the war ended, and the trial collapsed under wide public pressure. Brooks went on to a storied career as a screenwriter, film director, novelist, and producer. He was nominated for eight Academy Awards during his career, and he was best known for his books Blackboard Jungle , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , Elmer Gantry , and In Cold Blood .

Crossfire and The Brick Foxhole lived on in Vito Russo’s Celluloid Closet —a 1981 book about how Hollywood depicted homosexuality under the Hayes Code—as well as a 1995 documentary adaptation of the same name. In an era of brand pre-awareness and risk mitigation through intellectual property, remaking a Hollywood classic as an authentic period piece with queer characters is a natural fit.”

All of these rich texts tell us something very different about the Greatest Generation than Playtone would have you think. Burns, a deeply closeted gay Catholic, took a tremendous risk to depict the patrons of Momma’s bar. Brooks’ character Keeley, and the author himself, know that homosexuality is normal, natural, and occurs frequently; the men who organize the murder are depicted as the villains not just for killing, but for engaging in what we’d now call a hate crime. Both authors make clear that there’s nothing wrong with being gay or with gay men as a class, but that there’s something wrong with the people, groups, and societies that promote homophobia up to and beyond hate crimes. It’s something worth thinking about the next time the Greatest Generation is invoked to justify contemporary homophobia or transphobia.

A more accurate depiction of the past would include the people who have been here all along in the nation’s service: in combat, in the intelligence services, and in the State Department, who have otherwise been scrubbed out of history, humiliated, and had their lives destroyed.

Luke Schleusener is the president and co-founder of Out in National Security. He served as a speechwriter to former Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, and Ashton Carter.

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The Origins of the Mayflower Compact: Authors and Significance

This essay about the Mayflower Compact discusses its role as an early form of democracy initiated by the passengers of the Mayflower in 1620. Signed as a response to landing outside the Virginia Colony’s jurisdiction, it established self-governance in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The document, crafted by leaders like William Bradford and Edward Winslow, reflects Puritan values and emphasizes community rules and equality. It’s notable for setting precedents that influenced the U.S. Constitution, highlighting a collective effort toward democratic governance. This historical document demonstrates the early American commitment to self-rule and legal order, marking a significant moment in the evolution of American democracy.

How it works

The Mayflower Compact stands tall in American history, often hailed as one of the earliest successful stabs at democracy in what later became the United States. Signed on November 11, 1620, by the brave souls aboard the Mayflower, this document wasn’t just a big political deal—it marked a crucial leap toward self-rule in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Despite its hefty historical weight, the exact authorship of the Mayflower Compact remains a juicy topic for scholars, a nod to the teamwork behind it.

Crafted to set up a civil government, the Mayflower Compact came about after the Pilgrims and other travelers landed way north of their planned stop in the Virginia Colony and realized they were out of reach of English laws.

This here document was aimed at giving their new digs some legal oomph, since they weren’t under the thumb of any old colony or company. It laid down the law for self-rule, with all the grown-up males on board signing up to play by the community’s rules and regs for everyone’s good.

Though no one person can take the crown as the “author” of the Mayflower Compact, folks reckon it was a team effort, maybe hashed out by brainy chaps like William Bradford and Edward Winslow, two of the sharpest tools in the shed. These gents, leading lights in their crew, likely brought their smarts about English law and those pact things to shape up the Compact’s words and wisdom. The Compact itself is a mirror of Puritan beliefs in looking out for the group and keeping things shipshape, key to how the Pilgrims saw their faith.

The Mayflower Compact ain’t long, but it’s got heart. It starts with a promise to old King James of England and goes on to say the colony’s all about giving God a nod, spreading the Christian word, and making their motherland proud. But the real meat of the Compact is in its vow to make fair laws and setups for all, promising to stick by the rules laid down for the colony’s sake, showing they were all about letting the community have its say.

The Mayflower Compact made a splash that’s still rippling. It set up a way for settlers to get on board with the community’s rules, picked by folks they chose to steer the ship. It laid down the groundwork for later papers, like the U.S. Constitution, and kicked off the idea of folks having a say in how they’re run in the English spots across the sea. It’s seen as one of the first cheers for folks having their say, something that’s still a big deal in American democracy today.

In sum, while the Mayflower Compact might not have a single top dog calling the shots, it was a group effort by the Mayflower’s passengers to get their new home up and running right in the New World. The way they wrote up this paper and signed on the dotted line speaks to folks wanting to take the reins and run things themselves. The spirit of the Compact lives on in how America’s kept the faith with self-rule, a nod to what got started over 400 years back. Knowing about this little piece of history helps us see where American democracy started and what’s kept it ticking all this time.

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My grandmother is one of the most important people in my life, but political disagreements have driven a wedge between us

• My Korean grandmother has been a beacon of light and love in my life for as long as I can remember.
• In recent years, political disagreements have only ended in fights and tears.
• Our family has transitioned to a culture of silence when it comes to politics.

Few people in this world make me feel as loved as my halmoni does. In my earliest memories — hazy as they may be — she is there. She swaddles me in the warmest of hugs; she sings to me; she laughs toothily and heartily while conversing with my mother in what they have playfully coined "KorEnglish."

As I grow into adolescence, she is there. She cooks special seaweed soup as I experience my first menstrual cramps . At 13, I contract a viral infection, and a comment from a crush about my rash sends me home in tears. She painstakingly carves garden cucumbers into paper-thin slices and places them gingerly on the backs of my thighs. The sting cools.

At 19, I experience my first heartbreak . Without even trying, she says the perfect thing: "You had a good experience with a person that you loved. But now you have to find yourself. And clear mind. First love is always never work."

At 22, I lament the fact I cannot speak Korean . She institutes weekly phone call lessons and then gives me a Korean name: 만세, Manse. She tells me that Manse means "hooray," but not in a silly way. She shows me how it must be exclaimed — with one's arms outstretched, waving up and down. She tells me it was a very important word when the war ended.

Throughout my life, my grandmother has profoundly cared for me — physically, mentally, and sometimes spiritually. At every juncture, she has nurtured me, protected me, and been a fountain of unconditional, selfless love.

But now, we share very different political views , and for the first time, it's creating a divide in our relationship.

Political conversations are causing strife in our family

When I was in high school and living close to my grandmother, I would try to engage her in political debate , but conversations would all too often turn heated, sour, and sometimes even cruel. I eventually decided that what I most wanted out of our relationship was peace. For that peace to be maintained, politics must forever remain a can of unopened worms.

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In my head, I know that such silence is counterproductive. But in my heart, I know that having a close relationship with my Halmoni is profoundly important to me. I feel that her love for her family is boundless, and my love for her is boundless too.

Recently, I asked her if she felt she could speak openly about political issues with her family. Her answer was a resounding no.

"Ah, Bella." She let out an exasperated sigh. "Politics…you cannot talk to people in the family about it. Because it's just fighting. Even in a family, everyone have their own opinion. So they fight. It's not open mind, Bella. Politics is very secret. Right now, so divided. So bad. So it's hard to talk about it."

I also struck a nerve when I asked Halmoni what it's like to engage in political discussions with my mother.

"Whenever I talk with your mother…she say that everything I say wrong. Everything she say right. So I shut my mouth. When your mother gets upset, she yells at me…I don't want to talk to your mother about anything."

Silence is the reigning power in my family when it comes to politics. But it doesn't mean that we don't talk. We just don't talk about things outside our insular familial universe.

"When I call your family — they always call right back," Halmoni tells me earnestly. "I respect about that. That is very good. I think your mother teach the kids good. I think your family is good quality."

I'm struggling to connect with my grandmother on a deeper level

Most of my conversations with Halmoni are relegated to the domestic sphere: relationships, recipes, romantic comedies . I know without reservation that there is a depth to our relationship that I am missing out on.

Often, I feel that I'm being irresponsible by pretending like political conversations don't matter. But it's also comforting to construct a bubble of safety for our relationship and live inside it. To do so, however, I must suspend my beliefs, which often leaves me feeling hollow.

This is not a method I can apply to other relationships in my life, but in the case of my Halmoni, I don't want to squander a single moment with her.

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