My First Christmas

I was 5 and a half months old for my first Christmas. I have a very clear memory from it. At the time I was generally put to sleep after dark in a crib in my parents room. One night my Father came to get me and set me down on the floor of the living room with the lights out. So I was crawling around in the dark. Then my Mother plugged the Christmas tree in. They had set it up when I was in their room, so I'd never seen it before. I'd never seen a lit up Christmas tree before. The resulting look of amazement was recorded on film by my Father. I had actually been set down directly under the tree so the lights were all above me. I remember dazzling tree over me, followed by a blinding flash, and loads of laughter.


Later my Dad would admit that he had read about setting up such a shot with your baby in one of his photography magazines. It hadn't been entirely his own idea. This was supposed to prove that he was a hack. The lesson I took from it is, you can get good ideas from magazines.

Here's a happy moment from that time.

Early Music Memories

My parents brought me to Hawaii sometime around my 4th or 5th month. There was time for them to set up house in Schofield Barracks, ahead of my Father's ASA assignment in Korea. There was even time for some sight-seeing. My memories are mostly a jumble. But a few things stand out.

For one thing, there was a record player, from which there came sounds of interest. I didn't know what the sounds meant at the time, but I eventually found out. Bing Crosby was my parents' favorite. This wasn't one of the records we had in 1949, but it came to be my own all-time favorite not much later, and it gives the flavor of Crosby's singing for those too young to know who he was.



Then there was a trip to what must have been a mock ancient Hawaiian village. During our visit my Father carried me on his shoulders so I could see over a crowd. Some performers sang and danced to a Hawaiian chant. Two years later I recited the chant from memory to my Hawaiian friends. Here is a clear modern recording of the first half, which is the half they discussed, before getting into an argument over one of the lines (the last line you hear), by Halau Hula Ka No'Eau. It is the song of King David Kalakaua that begins Kaulilua I Ke Anu O Wai`ale`ale.



After that I had a long-lasting prejudice against the record player music. It wasn't that the sounds were bad, but there were no people in the record player. At the Hawaiian village there had been people.

A Swimming Time

I forgot to say it, but I was born in, of all places, South Carolina. My Army Father was stationed there at the time. Within about two weeks he was transfered to the D.C. area and for the next thirty or so years I didn't come any closer to the Deep South than the northernmost edge of Arkansas. Think of the burden that's been on me. "Where were you born, Man?" "South Carolina." "Oh. So you're Southern." "No, I'm not." "No? How could you be born there and not be from there, Dude?" "I don't know, maybe I'm a fucking walking contradiction of logic and a violation of the fucking space-time continuum. I'm not Southern. How can you be so stupid and still utter English words, walk around, and breathe?" Etc.

Once we were in Washington D.C., my parents hooked up with some old friends who became my Godparents. Here's my Godfather on our right talking with my parents while my Mother holds me. Check out the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the background. I grew up with those. I was still writing "humour" until my forties.


The tension in my Mother's face was not unusual. Here's another creepy shot of my Mother holding me.



We were in D.C. a few months before going to Hawaii. I only have one memory now that I'm sure belongs to that time. My Mother and I are in a shallow wading pool. I'm put in the pool somehow, and she calls me to her. I remember dog-paddling to her. This is significant, because she told me years later that the only time she ever saw me swimming was before we went to Hawaii, before I was 6 months old. After that I became terrified of the water (we'll see why later.)

Music To Be Born By

I was born in 1949 and so was this.

The Alpha

I remember my birth. I haven't always believed that it was my birth that I was remembering. For a long time I assumed, as most people do, that no one could remember much of anything of their early pre-verbal life, much less their birth. But I've changed my mind.

The turning point regarding my belief in this thing came in the Spring of 1984. I was 34 years old, and I had always had a vivid detailed "memory" of being run over by a car on an early birthday. I could not only remember it, I could remember a sequence of dramatic events leading up to it, which would have needed at least an hour to transpire. I remembered suffering two blows to my head, one to the top, one to the side. I remembered a tire of the car rolling over my chest, forcing my lungs empty and pushing me deep into the soil. I remembered the trip in the ambulance to the hospital afterward.

I knew from documentary evidence, family photos for example, that the event, if it had actually occurred, could have happened no later than my second birthday. There was no way anything like that could have happened on my third or fourth or any later birthday. I had assumed until 1984 that it either hadn't happened at all and I had dreamed it, or it happened on my 2nd birthday.

Then I found a box of documents my parents had hidden from me all their lives. The box included doctors' reports and x-rays concerning the admission of a baby to Tripler Medical Center in Honolulu. The documents were dated in multiple places. The date of admission was July 9, 1950, my first birthday. I almost fainted when I saw that. Then I thought, no, this can't be, this must have been a brother I never knew.

I knew my Mother had given birth to a baby that died within hours of severe organic deformities. If he had lived, they were going to call that baby my brother Robert. So I looked again at the admitting documents, expecting to see the name Robert. The name was mine. The documents described how a one-year-old baby was picked up by ambulance after arriving at the scene at 9:05 PM July 9, 1950. The baby was admitted with evidence of two instances of head trauma, a fractured and dislodged skull, tire-tracks across his chest, and a story from the Native Hawaiian ambulance attendants, duly noted, that he had been lifted off the grass. Exactly as I remembered it.

I couldn't believe anymore that I had simply dreamed it. But that also meant that I didn't dream waking up in the hospital later with a detailed and accurate memory of not only the events of those few hours but of the previous year. I am convinced now that I was so shocked by what had happened that I became obsessed at that time with the earliest events of my life, going back to my birth, because I needed to know what went wrong.

I suspect that most any 1 year-old child could tell you of memories of his birth if only he could interpret them and articulate them. What I did was preserve them out of a desperate need to find an interpretation, until I could.

Here is that interpretation.

First, there was blackness and I don't remember any sound. Then there was a sound, but I don't feel like I noticed it. Then suddenly there were two sounds. I remember suddenly being aware of something for the first time ever. I was aware that there were two sounds. I'm sure that what I was aware of were the two sounds of my Mother's and my own heartbeats. I didn't know that one came from me and one came from someone else. But I was aware that they were distinct from one another. It was a first awareness that there were distinctions.

If a time passed after that I had no sense of it. But then all at once there was a point of light in my imagination. It was just there. Then below it there was an image of a flat surface. I'd never seen anything before. I'm sure I wasn't really seeing anything then, it was a vision. Other lights appeared above the surface. It was like a night sky over a still ocean. The other lights began to revolve around the first and still brightest one, like the stars revolve around the pole star. The stationary light became brighter and a filament passed from it to the surface. For a moment a kind of ball appeared there, as if floating. I thought the ball was me. It was the first memory I had of having a sense of being. I was the ball, the light had made me.

Then, the stationary light moved downward to the "horizon" and appeared to move below it. As it did, the other lights continued revolving around it and moved in unison with it. After doing this, the original image was restored and the movement downward repeated. It repeated once or twice more. Finally I had in my mind the notion that not only could the light move, but so could I. I could somehow follow it. No sooner did I have the idea that I could follow the light downward, then I felt movement. I was aware of moving muscles, and changing position. I felt that I was twisting about and diving at the same time. The idea of movement and the movement happened at the same time. I have a sense that I was both causing the motion and all at the same time being propelled by an external cause.

Exactly then there was a sound, which I couldn't interpret at the time. But I could remember it phonetically and later I could interpret it. It was English and by the time I was 3 I knew enough to know the words used. "John -- I think the baby just turned over."

In all this I still had very little sense of time. The movements had happened once and for all, there was no idea that there was time between them. Even the beats didn't seem to beat in time. But then I noticed that they were closer and farther, and closer and farther. They would match and then separate. I saw a point of light again. The heartbeats became more and more matched, taking longer and longer to converge and diverge, and simultaneously the point spread out into a line segment.

As soon as the line seemed to stretch out horizontally forever the heartbeats synchronized.

After this all hell broke loose. There were loud voices. Yelling. There was pushing. I was pushing. I didn't know why at first. Then I saw a light and I decided that it was the light I was pushing for.

I don't remember any trauma. The idea that nobody would remember their own birth because it would be too unbearable doesn't fit with me. I don't remember it being bad. I remember it being thrilling. It was an adventure.

At least it was until the doctor held me. I was afraid being held by that man. He smelled wrong. I think I was predisposed to fear anything that smelled like a man at the moment of birth.

The birthing room was a blur otherwise. Bright but no details. The first details I remember were of something that looked like a typical viewing room. I was laid on a crib. As I laid there I happened to see a wall clock in front and above me. I took it for a face and was immediately afraid. My eyes strayed from it and I didn't know how to look back where I had seen it. So I had to search the whole wall for the clock again. Gradually I was able to find it, lose it, and find it again. I did this over and over, and the clock didn't attack me. So I came to trust the clock and decided it was there to protect me. I think I briefly thought of it as Mother.

Then a nurse appeared and I was confused again.