Some time ago,  I’d attended a writers workshop where we were asked to try and conjure up one of our earliest sensory memories. Part of an essay by Virginia Wolfe was read outloud in which she remembered resting her head in her mother’s lap and seeing the red poppy flower print on the fabric of her mother’s dress. I might have just made up the poppy part because although I remembered trying to envision the fabric when I first heard the essay, it might have been roses. The distance made of time and my own imagination could very well be responsible for what often occurs in memoir writing, the writer’s dreams and wishes filter the writing altering the original sensory perception.

Here, one of the earliest memories of mine…as I remember it today, onVeteran’s Day.

 My mother, grandmother, and I are on a train, stopped somewhere in the deep South. We are headed for Miami, where my father, a Navy man, has been stationed. Outside, a throng of rowdy sailors are cheering loudly. Barely two, I notice the sailors’ broad handsome smiles and the longing in their eyes. They press their hands and faces against the window. The train whistles its joyous but urgent sound. I watch my mother stamp a kiss on the streaked glass, then lift her head, flipping her long blonde hair so it falls over one eye like her screen idol, Veronica Lake. The sailors jump wildly and run alongside the train. My grandmother turns away, but I, having just undressed my doll, hold it high… hoping they will see. Please see. Finally, I steal back the attention and wave to the sailors who become specks of white in the dusk of the hazy, summer night.