Autobiographical Incident - Part 1

In both my Freshman classes they are composing an autobiographical incident. It is a two page writing assignment. They asked me to write an autobiographical incident that I could read to them and I decided to accept the challenge. They asked, "Do you remember back that far?" I answered, "I remember a lot of things." Then again as I ponder these things I find that most of my memories especially from early years are snapshots of places and people, not specific stories. And in fact stories are manufactured. We take memories and place limits on them. We give them a beginning, a middle and an ending and they become stories. So out of pieces of memories we construct stories.

I remember lying in my crib. I am comfortable until someone disturbs me. She picks me up puts me on a cold surface and treats me roughly. I know now it was my mother, but at this early age I have not feelings about her except that it is the one who treats me roughly, disturbs my rest and brings me from a place of comfort to discomfort.

As a little child I was the second child with a sister just a year older. We lived in a house built in the 1920's in a residential neighborhood of Philadelphia. Early memories bring me pictures of a cramped backyard, rotting wooden fences, old garages and even barns where a few old horses still boarded. I flash on a memory of lying in my bed and seeing a globe in the closet and wondering what it actually is. I never asked.

I see myself as little looking up at adults and not understanding anything. I look way up at adults and remember my father lifting me up. I remember sitting in a highchair while my mother and a strange woman speak a language incomprehensible to me. I notice a large round ceramic piece on the wall- in delft blue- a woman pours water into a bucket and she is near a well.

I hold a big person's hand, probably my father, as we walk a block away from my house. We pass a pharmacy with strange instruments in the window and even stranger pictures. Men are cutting open other men who lie naked on gurney. I see blood and exposed organs, knives, spoons and threads held by these men continuing their gory operation.

We lived with my mother's uncle, Uncle Mike or "Unk" as I would call him. He was the old man in the family, probably 60 years old. He had served as a Republican representative in the Pennsylvania House of Representative. He was my favorite and my memory is that he did little except read the newspaper and smoke his cigarettes. He would often ask me to do an errand for him- buy him cigarettes and he would give me a nickle. Like Pavlov's dog I began to make it a habit of asking him, "Unk, do you need anything." He would always answer the same way. "No, do you need anything?" And I would hem and haw. And after an excrusiating amount of time he would say, "How about a nickle?" I would say, "Sure."

I remember the day that they took him to the hospital, ambulance near our front door. This was after we had moved to our new house in Yeadon. He survived the heart attack and he was given a room downstairs .