Mutterings and Musings

Here be siblings

Challenge: Write about your earliest memory. Try to describe it in as much detail as possible.

My absolutely earliest memory is throwing a tantrum at my mum.
Well, actually it's her calmly talking me out of myself afterwards. I can't remember what I said, only that I hated being an only child and having no-one to play with. For context, we lived on a farm several miles from the nearest village and none of the other houses scattered around the immediate area had young children (I think there may have been teenagers further up the road, but I can't be sure).We had an enormous garden and mum was an avid gardener. If it was sunny, or even just not raining, she was out doing something.

At the very bottom of the garden was an old Bramley apple orchard. Not the sort with spindly trees you can stretch your hands around or pluck apples from, but ancient old gnarly trees that topped thirty foot and if you wanted the apples you needed a big long stick and a hard hat. Later, we had tire swings hanging from two of the trees and dens galore.There was a sort of no-mans-land between the garden proper and the orchard. Mum had planted a string of tiny little fir trees, that my whole childhood never grew more than a few feet high, as a border. And between our garden and next door was a wall of pine trees that were great for climbing in. But were the pine trees ended and the fir trees started (there was no our-garden, your-garden divide in the orchard, we just didn't play further than certain trees) there as an enormous camellia and a something-else-but-I-don't-know-what. They overhung each other to make a little dead patch of ground underneath where nothing grew. A perfect little den for a sulking toddler.I remember hiding under the camellia and mum (not a petite lady) having to crouch down and peer through the leaves to talk to me.

I remember being utterly furious that I didn't have anyone to play with (mum didn't count, because she spent most of her outdoors time either gardening or helping dad on the farm). It may be a phantom memory - but I'm sure I remember mum being quite amused by the whole scenario. This memory was a spring-summertime memory and I'm only two and half years older than my sister, so I must have been either nearly or just turned two.

Either mum was pregnant at the time, or she and dad took my tantrum very seriously,* because little sister was born the next February....


*I spent the next six or so years asking if I could go back to being an only child.......