The Rosetta Stone of my Memory

The things I remember from my past are little clips of little consequence:

 

My first memory is sitting on a couch right in front of the window. It's dark in the room because there are midnight blue blackout curtains on the window. Midnight blue with slubs of red. My dad keeps peering through the window. Only the grey of dawn peaks through the curtains. I think I was two.

After we moved into a house, the neighbor boys gleefully stomp up our attic stairs looking for treasure. My sister and I trudge up after them, having never been in the attic with its 50-plus years of coal dust sifting from the crawl space. My bare feet grow very dirty. I believe I was seven.

Many, many evenings, my parents play bridge in the kitchen with Mom's cousin Dale and his friend Kenny. My sister and I are on orders not to disturb them, but I don't listen as well as I should. I liked my cousin Dale and his friend Kenny too much to stay away for long. I could have been six, or seven, or nine.

At the Brookfield Zoo, I really wanted to see the snakes. I had read about them, and I wanted to see if they were as terrible as I thought. My parents decide to wait till last to see the snakes, and by then I am so tired and crabby we end up going home before seeing them. Everyone blames me. I was four at the time.

One glorious afternoon, I swing on a swing at the local park, waiting for my mother. The sunshine enchants me, and although my fellow day campers taunt me for singing at the top of my lungs, it doesn't bother me, because the sky sparkles. I was ten.

These memories fall out when I tug on one of them. The first memory stays with me without provocation like a stone in my pocket, as if it was a mini Rosetta Stone of my memory. The memory itself is so small, with no particular evocation of its own rather than waiting for something. 

Perhaps I was waiting for the rest of my life.