I have heard quite a few people say they have very few early memories. Unfortunately for me, I have an enormous capacity for remembering things vividly. I say “unfortunately” because it means I end up replaying things on an infinite loop, which often interferes with meditation, and can feed feelings of depression if they are not happy memories. Part of my goal with this blog is to write some of them down. Perhaps I won’t feel the need to cling to the past once it’s recorded.

I have memories going back well into early single digits: I vividly remember my favorite pants from when I was four, my tricycle, my leather shoes. I even remember pulling the cuckoo clock down from the wall when I was two-and-a-half. My parents and grandparents were in the kitchen. The cuckoo clock hung on the wall just inside the dining room. It had pinecone shaped weights hanging from chains. I was looking up at the clock and pulling a little on one of the cool metal pinecones when, bam, the clock fell, a sharp corner hitting me in the bridge of the nose. I remember everyone crowding over me to see if I was all right, my mom pressing a rag on the cut. I still have a little scar!

But I have far too many recollections to be able to share them all. Today I would like to tell the story of the first time I fell in love. Or perhaps we should say it’s the story of my first girlfriend? I was five, so those labels are probably too strong. But I had feelings! Her name was Elizabeth and she was in my kindergarten class. This would have been the 1966-67 school year. She had thick long hair down to her waist. I was attracted to that, her quiet, gentle ways, and her meticulous manners, which were striking in a kindergartner. I would walk her home from school. The school was half a block from my house, straight up the street. She lived on the other side of the block from me, so walking her home meant going around a couple of corners. I would walk back to my house through the alleys that cut our city block into quarters. Before slipping through the opening in the old wooden fence (a slat was missing), I would steal one last glance at her house, which was directly opposite ours on the other side of the block.

I say “house”, but it was an apartment in an old Victorian boarding house that must have been a hundred years old. It was mostly empty, rundown, and starting to sag. It had a balcony all the way around the second floor. Kind of creepy, actually. I would accompany her to the front walk and watch her from the sidewalk as she made her way around the back to climb the stairs.

One day we didn’t go straight home from school. We decided to take a walk around the outside of the school yard. As we were walking up the street away from both our houses I felt like we were on an outward-bound adventure. Just then, across the street, an old lady opened her front door and her little dog, seeing us, slipped through the door and raced across the street towards us. It started nipping at our heels and we both screamed like little girls and tried to get away. I felt stupid for not being more brave, especially when I saw that it was more interested in her ankles than mine. I doubled back and tried to get between her and the dog. By that time, the lady had come out and rounded up her little yapper. My heart was racing, and it was the first time I became wary of dogs. I still feel shame when I think of being fearful in front of her, but I know it’s ridiculous because I was five!

After that I was determined to be brave. Had I not dressed in a Superman costume that Halloween? One Saturday I got permission from my mom to go pay her a visit. I remember walking through the alleys to get to the old boarding house. I paused at the front walk to get my courage up, then went around to the back. The paint was faded and flaking, the balconies seemed to tilt precariously overhead, and the old wooden stairs creaked as I climbed them. I think most of the units must have been empty: it was too quiet! As I reached the top of the stairs I could hear a television through the screen door facing the rear. As I approached the door I could see a man in his twenties wearing a “wife-beater” tee shirt, sipping a beer from the bottle and smoking a cigarette. I stuttered a little bit as I asked, “Is Elizab-?” “She can’t play,” he interrupted brusquely. I could see her sitting in the background, turned to the side with her hands clasped in her lap, pretending not to see me. Suddenly I had a sense of what life at home might be like for her, why she was so reserved and meticulous. I slowly pulled my gaze away from her, glanced briefly at the stern face of her dad, turned, and sheepishly retreated down the steps. My parents were always polite to anyone who came to the door. I realized that her situation was different. I think they moved away, because she was not at my school the next year. The memory of that old apartment building haunts my dreams to this day.