Earliest Memory

Have you ever sat down and thought back to what your earliest memory is? Does it ever change over time? When I think back it is hard to tell what is memory and what is stories told by siblings and parents; when you have 7 siblings you get A LOT of childhood stories. One of my fondest childhood memories is sitting in a living room by a coffee table playing with My Little Pony's on a swing set and Ferris wheel. My granny telling me its time to put them up and go to bed so I put them in a box in a closet. I remember a hot hot soothing bath and wrapping up in a cheetah print blanket. I have always loved that memory the most. Later in life I learned that my granny died when I was 3 years old and I did in fact keep my pony's at her house. She never owned a cheetah blanket but according to my mom and nanny that she had a cheetah robe that she just loved when I told them of my memory of her. There are no pictures and no stories told of that; therefore, I assume that is my earliest memory.

To think that my earliest memory was at 3 years old; why just that one out of all of them and I wonder what memories my son will have at that age. My fiance's son loves to tell us about his memories of being in his mommy's tummy. We love to hear his story and talk about it with him; the sound of her heartbeat, her voice, how safe it felt as a baby. I know that he can't really remember that, but love to play along and let him use his imagination.
As I get older I forget memories as I make new ones and love when something like a sound, smell, touch or taste brings an old memory back. My childhood best friend, Joel, and I feeding the chickens out of the tree-house in his backyard, jumping on the trampoline, swinging on the rope swing 20 feet in the air to spot snapping turtles for my brothers, swimming in the creek catching crawdads, and our bunny Flop who was suppose to be a boy and ended up having baby bunnies during The Leprechaun movie. Other memories just slip away harder to remember parades, friends, teachers, hobbies, toys, etc just slips away and only those random ones stay.
All I can do is pray that the boys have just as much wonderful random memories of their childhood. It makes me happy knowing they can jump on the same trampoline, swing from the same tree (different rope swing now), catch crawdads in the same creek and hopefully hit as many pine cone home-runs as I did.
Memories are such peculiar things in life, but ever so fabulous when you need one to make you smile. Nothing like taking childhood memory pieces and putting in a college in a scrapbook. pieces of pine cone, a cutout from the old trampoline piece before the middle was replaced, pictures of the chicken coop and creek.