Today’s All About Me writing prompt is to discuss 3 significant childhood memories and describe them. You can find it here. Childhood memories are amongst the most significant memories we have and have been the subject of many a psychological study. Childhood amnesia, according to Scientific American (Childhood Memories) kicks in around the age of 8. This means that your earliest memories will likely be after the age of 8. It is a sort of retrograde amnesia.

My earliest memories, sadly, were of my father being sick. I was 9 when he passed away. I’ve written about it before (here for one), but I have not mentioned that I dreamt of his passing months before it happened. It’s not the first dream I have had prior to it coming to pass, but it is to this day the only death I ever dreamt before hand. I’m not sure if this was to prepare my young self for what was coming, but I remember it with clarity. My father was a doctor so his name was never in the White Pages, but I found one and opened it. There was light coming from the middle of the book and, when I opened it, there was a tombstone with bright light shining behind it. It said David Elliot Levenson Beloved Father, Son, and Husband. Born Dec 11 Died Nov 1. No years. I woke up and I knew my Daddy wasn’t going to be there next year. On October 31st, 10 days after my 9th birthday, my mother took my brother and I to my grandmother’s for the night. The next morning she went to tell me and couldn’t. I told her I knew and it was okay. Years later, I found my fathers obituary. He passed away at 12:01 am on November 1st.

Those were the days…. 

This is not a single memory so much as a block of memories. Growing up, I lived in an amazing neighborhood. My little brother is 6 years younger than I am. We had about 20 kids in our neighborhood, of which I was the oldest and my brother was one of the youngest. We would have so much fun in the summertime. One family had a small pool and would do volleyball with the adults, while the kids played. We had a larger pool that often hosted most of the neighborhood and A LOT of those awesome memories.We would play football in one family’s yard, perfect for the activity. We would play in the tree-house of another neighbor. At night, you could see flashlights flashing all over the neighborhood as kids ran about playing night-time games.  It’s a shame you don’t see that much anymore. It made for a lovely childhood.

If you knew the amount of Macrobiotic Cooking my young self was subjected to you would feel especially bad for me. 

Lastly, I’ll end with another happy memory. Vacations. There is a reason why vacations are the memories most often cited by people. Since they’re a break from daily lives, we forget about the little squabbles and just remember the amazing time we had. I was extremely lucky that my dad was a doctor and my step-dad is an optometrist. We were lucky enough to enjoy lots of vacations and visiting family. I don’t think I could pick just one that was my favorite. I did have a lot of fun when we went to a Club Med and my cousin and I were around 14-15 so we got to run around on our own basically the entire vacation. It was like being a mini-grown up.

Good times!

What are some of your favorite childhood memories??

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