Sliding Down the Stairs

What is your earliest memory?

The funny thing about childhood memories is that I think it's possible to hear a story enough times that you think it's a memory.  Which is why I'm not sure if my earliest memory is actually a memory or just what I imagine after hearing the story so many times.

To hear the story told, we lived in a huge two story house until just after I was born until I was about two and a half.  The bathroom that I took baths in was on the second floor.  One day I was upstairs and I decided to take my little bathtub out of the big bathtub and slide down the stairs.

What I remember about this is not consciously making the decision to slide down the stairs, or even really the act of sliding down the stairs, but just the feeling of exhilaration the turned into panic as I approached, what was sure to be a crash landing, at the bottom.

Mom says I didn't crash.  I was perfectly fine.  But I cried because I freaked myself out so bad.  Which could explain why I don't like roller coasters I guess.

It isn't long after that I have for sure real memories.  We moved in to the house that my parents still live in when I was two and a half.  My mom was pregnant with my brother.  I remember going to look at the house when other people still lived in it.  I remember walking up the front stairs and Dad carrying me down the basement stairs.  I can still remember my first impression of the kitchen.  My two year old brain thought that the bright green walls and pumpkin colored counter tops were amazing.

I don't remember actually moving in to the house but I do remember the day that the boys that lived down the street came up to scope out the new kid.

About four months after we moved in to that house Mom went into labor with Morgan.  I remember being at the house while she was in the hospital.

Almost all of my really good childhood memories were made in that house and all of my bad memories too. The first time I broke my leg and the second time I broke my arm. My Thundercat birthday party. Playing hot lava monster in the front yard with all the neighborhood kids. Getting in trouble for not cleaning my room. Getting in trouble for not going to school. Making out on the front stairs. The panic of having to tell mom I was pregnant.  The first time I had to move home because I was getting divorced, and the second time too.

Outside of the almost memory of sliding down the stairs I only remember ever living in that house.  I count my lucky stars that I have always had the constant of that house and my mom and dad and all of the great memories that make that house be home.