What is your earliest memory? Mine is from when I was nearly three. For a few months, my parents and I lived in a caravan, in a field belonging to the house they were renovating. It was a really hot summer, so I guess I must have spent all my waking moments outside, as the caravan would have been very hot and uncomfortable. At the edge of the field was a big barn, with tarred weatherboarding walls. My mother used to fill up my little bucket with water, give me a paintbrush, and allow me to paint the barn walls with it. The water would soak into the surface of the wood and turn it a darker colour, until the sun baked it dry again. I thought I was painting and I loved it.
This is my first memory, followed by my third birthday party, for which we had a rabbit birthday cake, still in the caravan, in the September. I can still remember that “painting” so well. I can feel the bucket in my hand, see its patterns, and sense the satisfaction in making something look different. I didn’t know it then, and in fact I’ve only recently given this any serious thought, but I was discovering creativity at the same time that I was learning that I was me.
Visual creativity didn’t last very long for me; it was only satisfying while I couldn’t read and write. I remember my mother saying to me “won’t it be wonderful when you can read, Harriet? You will be able to go off into a corner on your own and read all by yourself”. This may well have been uttered in exasperation as I asked for yet another story, but I absorbed this idea and thought to myself that, yes, it would be truly wonderful.
And soon enough, with very little trouble or drama, I did learn to both read and write. And going off into a corner to read has been one of the greatest pleasures and indulgences of my entire life to date. If I deprive myself of this activity, whether out of necessity or just forgetting that it’s vital to me, I don’t feel truly myself. And writing – well that’s an experience on a whole new level. Not only could I read sentences that other people had constructed, but I could make brand new shiny ones all of my own. And once I had started I couldn’t stop, as you can see!
What I now think is this: if something was significant enough to become imprinted on my memory so that my sense of it is as fresh and vivid today as it was 48 years ago, it must have been a very, very important experience. And yet, once I had submitted a collection of poems at my undergraduate finals when I was 21, I gave up any idea of being a creative person. I did work in journalism for a while, but in a very technical environment; I didn’t think I had anything to say and confined my writing to journaling and whatever was needed for my work.
Finally, I’m letting it flow again. I’ve found that all I have to do is write and the more I write, the more ideas I have and the more I write…and more…and more… Who knows where it will lead? But I am absolutely certain that writing is what I have to do, that all these ideas have to come out, and the drive that I feel to construct sentences, to choose words and put them together, has to be obeyed. It feels like a mission, part of my purpose.
So, could this work for you? Do you have a very early childhood memory, an enjoyable one, and can you see why it was enjoyable? Is this something you are honouring in your life now, or is it a part of you that you left behind with childhood or youth and perhaps needs to come into your present? I wrote recently about the importance of playfulness, and how it can connect us with our true selves; what can you remember that shows you who you really are? Please let me know if this resonates for you.
