I am 60 years old, and have never had any trouble remembering addresses where I have lived, names of old school-mates, etc. One of my earlier memories is of being a small child, sitting at a table with two other children and a woman whom I took to be my mother. I did not recognize the other children by name, or the woman as actually being my mother. She was anxious, frightened, trying to make us hurry and eat.

Then we were put in a small wooden boat (rowboat). At that time, I did not know what it was. There was a flood, and I remember it clearly. I was probably too young to have had any language, and the anxiety was so awful that I took it as anger, and was afraid of that, not the water.

In this life, my mother and older brother both assure me that we were never in a flood, or evacuated. But that memory is as real to me as my first-grade teacher, or any thing else about my life. I was 12 when we first got a television, and had no access to any other, or to any movie, so it wasn't a memory that I borrowed from a source like that. I have always remembered it.

Bonita Henderson

Posted April 25, 2004