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This memory is a vision, like a short movie clip. It was a visit to the doctor's office. I was crying; a lot. It must have been traumatic, at least from my perspective. As this memory starts, I'm approaching a house on a corner lot, where a doctor lived. At least, I hope he was a doctor. Doctor's offices back then were frequently in their homes. His walkway led from the corner to the door and there were a few steps at both ends. In this memory, I was floating. Inside there was a room of a decent size, normal, not huge, just a room. I floated into the next small room, the exam room I assume. I don't recall details there, nor anything special, nor if I was still crying.
The next thing I recall, I'm back in the car, in the arms of someone in the back seat, probably my grandmother's. My mother was in the front passenger's seat. At this point I was definitely crying, a lot, too much, and not from pain. My crying translated to: "Give me one!". She opened a small envelope, and took out a small white pill. She handed it to the grandmother person holding me, and I happily ate it. I think I stopped crying then. I am guessing it was placebo, sugar. That was the beginning of my sugar addiction. Or maybe I was already addicted. That's it. That is the memory. And this had to have happened before we moved from Newtonville, Massachusetts to Hatboro, Pennsylvania.
Years later, at some point I was again attempting to identify my oldest memory. My mother said "You can't possibly recall living in Newton. You were too young. We moved when you were 9 months old". I related this memory many times to my friends claiming it as my oldest memory saying, "I can remember when I was 9 months old".
When I was 16 in 1964, we moved back to Massachusetts. A couple years later I got my driver's license. My mother recalled our dentist, from long ago, Dr. Jones in Newtonville, and I was sent there for an appointment. After one of those trips, I drove over to find Trowbridge Avenue and the house where I was born. Turning off the main street onto a side street, I passed a house on the corner and said to myself, "That's the house!", "That's the doctor's house". It was no longer an office; it was just a normal residence. Later I told my mother, and she confirmed that was the right location.
I held onto that confirmation until about 2005, when I came upon new data that made me more accurately define the date of my memory. There was this painting, a seascape, that always hung in my parents' home, over the fireplace in Hatboro, then in Belmont, MA, and Bath, Maine, then in their final apartment in St. Petersburg. One day, when I was visiting my dad, for some reason I took it off the wall and looked at the back. I was told it had been a gift from our next-door neighbor in Newton, a man named Bonnar. He was a listed Rockport Artist and there were comments written on the back of the frame. One noted that it was a going away gift given to my parents dated October 1948. I asked my dad if he received it after moving. "No" he said, he received it just before we moved. I would have been 15 months old then.
My oldest brother, Doug, would have been in school at age 9. So, I asked Doug and he recalled that when he moved, he went into school in Hatboro just after the school year had begun. That confirmed the 1949 move as October, not April as I had been told by my mother earlier. She was no longer with us at that time.
So, there you have it. The memory, the research and investigations that led to my present conclusion that my oldest memory is of when I was 15 months old. Today, that painting now hangs here, in my home, behind my recliner where I watch TV.
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