We Brush Our Own Hair Now

I am very little and live at my grandma’s house. She has cooked tapioca pudding and it is cooling in a row of small bowls pushed back against the wall on the kitchen counter. My eyes don’t quite clear the counter height, but I stand on tiptoes, sniffing the air.

I have (what feels to me to be) an inordinate number of solid memories from my very early childhood. From my birth until my mom got married when I was 3, I lived at my grandma’s with my mom and her teenaged brothers. (My pap also lived there, I think… but I have no early memories of Pap.) I have memories of my uncles and the drafting table in their bedroom and their weight bench behind the basement stairs. I remember the bookshelves in the dining room where I pulled down a copy of The Hobbit and tried very hard to read the words inside because I knew by the cover and the artwork that it was a story I wanted to know. I have memories of the afternoon light in my grandma’s bedroom where I sometimes napped. I remember the sound of my grandma’s dog, Petey—his nails on the linoleum of the kitchen floor. I remember Mama Kitty.

Most of my early memories involve my grandma or my uncles. But I’ve had therapists ask me what my earliest memory is of my mom—asking so I can better understand my attachments in my life today.

My mom was a teen mom, and during my first few years she worked hard to finish high school while also working part-time jobs. I have a vague memory of her bringing home leftover food from her shift at Arthur Treacher’s.