Welcome to Marketing for Romance Writers (#MFRW) 52-week Blog Challenge. This week’s topic is, My Earliest Memory. Unlike many people who seem to maintain crystal clear memories of Back in the Day (like my hubby) and forget more of what’s happening today, many of those early years are a blur. I’ve been known to state that together my hubby and I can maintain one brain of memories. I can ensure he remembers the more current happenings, while he shares memories my brain seems to have run out of room to maintain.
My Earliest Memory
When I recall my earliest memory it’s like watching a screenshot or two. Perhaps the memory is of my first year in elementary school, visiting my grandparents, or playing outside with friends. Some of that feed may be fed with a few photos from those early years. Those help prompt my overloaded brain to spew out a memory or two. Before that, it goes to say, that perhaps I came into the world,
or from under a cabbage patch, or off the ship at about five or six years of age.
Taking Photographs Back in The Day
As the fourth child of five, I’m hard pressed to find many, if any, photos to document those very early days. When I’ve asked 
my mother about a baby photo she will occasionally point to a random infant in a blurry photo and declare it might be me.
I know that she is only trying to pacify me for growing up in a time before selfies and the need to take that Polaroid, or a roll of film to be developed, was like photo roulette with no editing ability, double-exposures and not knowing know just how many pictures might turn out. The time and effort left you without as much urge to take as many photos as nowadays.
Kids of today should have a much better ability to recall every moment of their lives, and perhaps even before birth, with a plethora of images to capture the memories that time may have stolen.
This Memory Holds True Today
There is one overarching memory that contributed to me being the author that I am today.
One of the earliest desires I recall is longing to be a #writer. #MFRW #memories Share on XI would craft cartoon-strip like stories of underdog heroines coming into their own. Playing in the woods set my imagination on fire of a girl who could speak to the animals and communicate with nature. These early memories influenced many of my stories of today.
Follow the blog hop and see if the other authors have a better memory than me—which is pretty likely.
What is Your Earliest Memory?
P.S. Before I forget
I wanted to remind you that I’ve joined up with eleven other incredible authors to create a fabulous interactive website called Moonlight & Mystery. You seriously have to check out all the amazing stuff going on! Right now there’s a contest for your favorite suspense, paranormal, time slips and urban fantasy covers. It’s a win-win for both the author nominated and the reader! Get all the details right here. Hurry over—submission for the contest for this month ends on January 13th.
My sister is 5 years younger than me, and I remember she made a valiant effort to photograph us separately at times. When my two older kids came along, I made sure to make a photo album of each….my oldest’s goes from birth-1, obviously, while my daughter’s goes birth-2yrs. When my caboose appeared, I went a little overboard; he has TWO albums; birth-6 months and 6 mos-his 1st birthday! It was easy to capture ‘just him’, since his siblings were in school all day!
*remember MOM made a valiant effort*…..brain ran ahead of the fingers….
I try to make an effort with my twins to take some separate photos (and remember who was who in the infant photos- yikes!). Because while I was pregnant, a friend who is a twin complained that she didn’t have one pic of just her without her twin sister, lol.
I admit to the picture taking slacking off with each kid. *hides in shame* I had a ton (before a fire) of my daughter, and then took plenty when the Hubs and I had our first son. I still take pictures of the kids and I have random shots of the youngest two but things I was adamant about before (yearly Christmas photos) I’ve not done in years. It happens. Will go check out your other site.
It is hard to keep up with photos and ‘being fair’ with anything with kids. Cause who knows, they might grow up and write a blog post about you, lol (waves in case Mom stops by)- thanks for visiting!
Besides the “photo routlette” once a picture was developed you had to take it out of the envelope to organize it into an album, then write the captions. And decide what to do about the left-over negatives (often of your thumb.) Don’t know about your house but I still have boxes and boxes of envelopes of pictures. Each year my goal is to clean them out, but that also means reliving the events Or as one person called the task to clean out, the crying game.
I do have pics and envelopes waiting for a place to go- and who can throw out negatives? It just seems wrong, lol.
I’m hoping I can leave a comment (more likely not with the issues I’m still having with WP).
I’m laughing over here. You and I, our blogs, sound interchangeable! Gads all the fuss about memories, I can barely remember if I took my bp med five minutes after taking it! Love the puppy, though.
Yay! It worked!!!!
yeah- success Calisa! So glad you stopped by.
My younger sister always complains that there are a ton of photos of me and none of her, lol. Kids nowadays have no idea what a pain it was to take photos, get the film out of the camera without exposing it, run it to the store for development, and pick it up a few days later.
Then all that effort and no photoshop, lol.
Here’s a recent memory for you, Maureen. Did you notice that you and I were featured back to back on the January FF&P Newsletter?
I did see that, Ed! Looks fabulous!
Thanks for sharing, and good luck with the new website!
I am so lucky I was the first-born and that my dad was a very keen photographer! I need those pics to recall anything lols. Love the pic of scruffy 🙂