What's your earliest memory?

[HerRoyalHappiness]

Mine is from when I was 2 years old. I'd woke up in the night and heard my mum crying. I walked to my door which had a safety gate on and my mum was heading down the stairs in floods of tears. I asked her for ju (juice) she said "one minute baby" and went downstairs, reappearing with a sippy cup of water for me and telling me to have my drink and go back to bed. I found out years down the line my dad had physically pushed my mum out of bed and beat her. So it was probably that which woke me in the first place.

I've just asked DS1 his earliest memory. His is being sat at nans house and nan juggling the yellow ball pit balls while he was sat in the ball pit. He'd have been around 18 months old when that happened and I had no idea he even remembered it as we've never spoke about such a, what seemed to us, innocuous incident. I'm so glad his early memory is a happy one though and nothing like mine. He giggled his little head off watching nan juggle especially when she dropped that balls!

Standing in the kitchen at home watching my nan washing up and her telling me that my mum and dad would be home soon with my new baby brother. My nan had come round to sit with me and my sister while my dad went to the hospital to pick my mum and brother up, I would have been 2. I can also remember going to a party at my other nan's house for Charles and Diana's wedding which would have been a couple of weeks later

I can remember sitting in my cot and it was Christmas and mum and dad gave me a big teddy and a little teddy. I was born in April so I was probably 20 months old. Big ted had a ribbon round his neck.

My first birthday - I was in the bath when a GM came in with a big Teddy she’d brought for me. I’ve still got him many decades later.

And being put to bed in a (presumably padded) drawer at the other GM’s house at Christmas. Don’t know how old I was but must have still been very small to fit in a drawer. And there was a doll on the Christmas tree that was for me.

@HerRoyalHappiness your poor mum. Did she stay with your dad?

I have a couple which pre-date my brother being born when I was 25 months old.

One is of being in my pushchair in the supermarket and crying because my mum was putting the rain cover on - I couldn't explain that I didn't like the way it steamed up/the rain droplets prevented me from seeing out clearly.

In another, we were staying at my grandparents' house. I was in a cot at the foot of the bed, standing up and playing with some coloured wooden balls on a wire which ran between the cot railings, a bit like an abacus. They made a rattling noise when they span round (I bet my parents loved it 😂).

I also remember the day my brother was born - my dad carried me into the hospital room and I struggled to get down because I was desperate to see my mum. I ran across to the bed but it was too high to climb up on, and my dad had to lift me. I don't remember my brother being there at all, though!

I’ve got a freakishly good memory and can remember a lot from the age of two onwards.

I remember going to pick my sister up from the hospital when i was 18 months old. I remember it being a cold but really sunny day with the light flooding in through the windows. I was on my dads shoulders. The nurses were wearing those paper hats and one of them gave me one to take home.

Falling down uncarpeted stairs, I was 3

I have a few from before two. One when the wheel fell off the pushchair and we were all laughing.
One when I was ill, stood on a big bath towel I had a temperature and was being cooled down with water and a facecloth I stood watching the TV holding onto a chair.
There's more.

My dad holding me in his arms and giving me peanuts (almost 60 years ago when it would have seemed 'ok') I was under two years old & can remember the saltiness on my lips

@itssquidstella she did stay with him until I was 11. She had 2 more kids to him then she came to her senses and left. He was never violent to us kids. Never once even a tap on the hand. But behind closed doors he was awful to my mum. It was more the mental abuse that made her leave though, he once locked himself in the bedroom, only emerging to go to work. He didn't speak to my mum or us kids for 3 weeks.

I'm so glad there are so many happy memories here, although some not so good such as falling down the stairs!

I have something that came to me recently. We had a wooden floor in the front room and a big rug. I had a big wooden playpen with bars, in front of the fire. Mum used to give me a little hand mirror to play with, with a blue shiny back. I can remember that mirror! Anyway, one day she gave me the mirror and went to the kitchen and when she came back in, I hadn't got it. It had gone, and she never found it. Over the years we both wondered what had happened.

Fast forward 60 years and a memory surfaced, of me poking it down into a gap between the floorboards and the stone slab in front of the fire.

My very first memory is of poking my fingers through the ventilation holes on my pushchair's raincover while we were waiting for my big sister to come out of school. I must have been younger than 18 months because that's how old I was when the wheel came off the pushchair and my dad refused to let my mum buy another. I remember when it came off too. My poor mum was walking back from town with me in the pushchair, my 5 year old brother and 6 year old sister, and the shopping. The wheel came off and she somehow had to persuade me to walk and lug the shopping and broken buggy all the way home.

My brother being born. I was at the house my parents had just bought and my granny came to stay, she lived with us from when I was about 4 months old.
I was taking to granny in the sitting room, when my father came in carrying my brother and I asked if I could hold the baby. I was told to sit up against the back/sides of the sofa and then got my 10lb brother in my lap. Excellent!
We still love one another now, 60+ years later (brother and I). We also have a younger sister, we love her too.