Rain.
The earliest memory he had was of rain.
He was young, very young, less than two years old perhaps. His family had been having an outdoor party at his parent’s house, and suddenly the rain came. The memory started with the rain, and he found out later that it had been Memorial Day, and the family had gathered there after watching his grandfather march in a parade earlier.
Now he was sitting in the yard, getting drenched and crying. The rain had startled him, and everyone was running about collecting things and carrying them inside, out of the rain.
He was scared and confused, and everyone hurrying around him didn’t help matters any. Finally someone snatched him up and laid him in his crib in the back room.
Once in his crib and soothed hastily by his mother, he calmed down and the rain falling against the window lulled him to sleep.
Now, as a grown man, he would sometimes remember this as he lay in bed at night and the rain softly drummed out it’s rhythm on the glass. He marveled at how one thing could drive him from extreme fear one minute to relaxing calm the next.
Then he thought it fitting that his first memory in life should be a contradiction and a paradox.
Then the rain would lull him to sleep.
© 2011 David Ferraris
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