WHAT IS YOUR FIRST MEMORY?

Mine is when I was three. We are in the kitchen as a family, and it’s after dinner. My older brother—who would have been seven at the time, I think—is sitting at our wooden kitchen table. We’d eventually replace this table when I was a teenager, redoing the kitchen to more modern blue marble countertops and a white table, blue and white being my mother’s favorite color scheme. To this day, that color combination reminds me of the classiness of her New England upbringing, the ability her eye has to find sophisticated name brand pieces of China amidst kitschy tourist mugs and broken ceramic ash trays on a dusty shelf of a thrift store.

Before we upgraded our wooden table to the smooth laminate one that would have a leaf to extend the table top, allowing for more people to dine when we hosted, I would spend my childhood sitting after dinner—just like this earliest memory—finishing homework while my mother was elbow deep in suds, scrubbing her prized Teflon pots and pans. That table was weathered over the years, covered in indentations from our writing papers and solving math problems, colored with pencils and markers. It was lived in, loved on. A remembrance I can still recall because my childhood also felt lived in and loved on.

It was the early 90s, and my memories from this time are tinted with sepia. So there I am, three years old, finished with dinner. My mother is cleaning the dishes, and my father must be assisting my brother with early elementary schoolwork—at least, that’s how my brain remembers it.

But I guess they’re done, and I’m helping my mom put the dishes away. She’s handing me silverware, and I’m placing each piece in its respective spot of our top silverware drawer. We will eventually have two silverware drawers, but my memory isn’t clear if we have two at this point in the timeline. What I do know is I’m placing knives and forks and spoons in the top drawer, which would later become the “everyday silverware” drawer, the third drawer housing the newer silverware we reserved for when we had family or friends over (the second drawer was for dish towels, of course).

I knew the shiny flatware in the third drawer was fancy because we had forks that were only ever used for dessert—something called, easily enough, dessert forks. No licking clean the same fork you used spearing your dinner to then dissect your dessert in my mother’s household, no sir. My mother grew up in a family that worked for everything they had, but the grandmother I never got to meet instilled in my mom Emily Gilmore standards of etiquette, a fact I adore about her, but have never told my mother that I adore. She likes things to be nice, and that kind of attention adds a touch of whimsy to the world. I remember eating instant Jell-O out of crystal dishes that I’m sure my parents received as part of their wedding gifts. She probably doesn’t even remember that, but breaking the smooth seal on the top of strawberry Jell-O with a spoon in that decadent glass is one I’ll never forget.

While I’m putting away silverware, my parents are chatting over my head, my father to my right at the kitchen table, my mother to my left at the sink. Sean, my brother, must still be at the table too, but I guess it’s possible he ran off to his room or outside to play. Either way, my parents are discussing a trip—and not just any trip, but one to Disneyworld. The magic, elusive place where dreams come true and princesses exist.

I must get excited, because even though I’m young, I know what Disneyworld is. The memory is fuzzy, blurry around the tea-stained edges in my brain. But what I clearly remember is this: my mother hands me a spoon to put in the drawer around the same time the mention of Disneyworld is uttered in to the universe. My little green eyes look at the spoon and, without hesitation, I lick it.

And then? I put it in the drawer, ready for the next clean piece of flatware to follow. My parents don’t chastise me—they must not see me commit the crime. I just get handed another spoon or fork and the work continues. Clearly, I got away with something big here, and I feel a little thrill run down my spine.

Of course, it’s possible none of this happened. I was three years old when we went to Disneyworld, so this memory would have been before I fell in love with the Dumbo ride, or met Cinderella in her castle, or saw the Little Mermaid production (a movie I was obsessed with at a very young age—a fellow redhead swimming in the sea and singing pop calypso with a cranky crab? Sign me up.) This memory would have been before I fell asleep at the Disneyworld parade, or before I was told I get one souvenir, and I waited til the very end to get a Daisy Duck stuffie. (Why Daisy Duck? I truly don’t know. She did have a fabulous purple dress, bow, and heels, so maybe her ensemble did it for me, purple being my favorite color. But she was never a character I truly loved. The mind’s choices are boggling.)

The thing is…none of those Disneyworld memories are vivid to me. In fact, I’m not sure I remember Disneyworld at all. I think these are stories I was told, and they’ve been planted in my head, so I think I remember them. Could the same be true for this kitchen memory? Is it possible I’ve created a conglomerate memory from all the years of my mother doing dishes, hours spent at the table doing homework with my dad, and discussions of vacations happening in the kitchen?

If that’s true…did I really lick a spoon and place it in a drawer among clean silverware? If so, who ended up using that spoon, getting the dried-up aftermath of my saliva? And if it didn’t happen…why is this image so fiercely penetrated into my psyche as part of me?

Memory is so slippery, and at times I wish I could conjure it all up, paste the pieces together with film glue and watch the reel roll across my vision.

Later, that top silverware drawer would hold my mom’s one souvenir pick from Disneyworld: Mickey and Minnie corn on the cob holders. I relished when these would get to come out. I would help my mom out by setting the table. I remember eating with these the most when we would cook outside by the pool, my father throwing Beer Can Chicken or hamburgers and corn on the cob on his giant grill. My mom would make French fries or tater tots in the oven, rounding out the meal with a salad tossed with cut baby carrots and a variety of dealer’s choice dressings on the side—Hidden Valley ranch, Kraft Catalina, or Kraft raspberry vinaigrette. I had the honor and the privilege of getting Mickey and Minnie—donned in farmer overalls, of course—out of the top drawer. I would always choose one Mickey and one Minnie, a boy and a girl holding up my corn for me, which I would douse with pats of butter and too much salt. But it was better to hold on to something firm, as opposed to my fingers getting greasy with fat.

And so life is like this. Pieces are pierced so tightly together in our heads—I can picture the labels on those bottles of salad dressing, the metal prongs that sunk their teeth in to the cobs of the corn. Memories are born in this way, the small details making up the moments we cling on to.

Why did my mom, of all things, pick out corn on the cob holders as her souvenir? I asked her recently—why those?—and she said she probably just needed corn on the cob holders. I had my Daisy, she had her Mickey and Minnie. And together, we created a life. We were a family, intertwined in many ways.

Over the years, a lot of things have changed. But I believe those Mickey and Minnie souvenirs are still in my parent’s top silverware drawer, just waiting to get pulled out and used. They may be missing some paint, or have some chips in their design, but they’re still there—lovingly waiting to be called upon. In this way, I know my family is always there when I need them—dependable, sturdy, and holding me up when I need it.

Beth Bolton is a writer and editor living in Texas. After a decade as a mental health therapist, she is now a full time editor for New Harbinger Publications. She has been published in numerous poetry anthologies and is active on Substack. When she isn't reading or writing, you can find her spending time with her loved ones, preparing for Halloween, and searching for vintage vinyl records.