A Birthday of Fire and Skeletons
My first memory, or at least, the earliest memory that stuck with me throughout life, started as a dream. This dream strikes me hard for its depth and terror at such a young age.
The dream was set in my home. It was my birthday. My whole family was there - parents and grandparents. At the time, I was the only child, being that I'm the oldest of my siblings.
The first odd, and down-right disturbing, thing I noticed in this dream was that everyone at the party was a skeleton. They weren't quite detailed, science class skeletons, but rather the comical, cartoon-styled structure of bones that you would find in classic Disney shorts. So comical, in fact, that my grandmother's typically up-clipped and curly hair was a fan of two-dimensional, white dog bones.
Just as my young mind considered the oddity of how bones represented hair, things turned for the worse. The fire alarm broke all joy, blaring an ear-splitting wail. The heat of fire licked at my skin, and the flames rose from seemingly nowhere. Everyone broke out into a mad dash to escape the house. I, however, was sucked into a bone-jail, placed tight in my skeletal mother's abdomen.
She wouldn't budge, watching the fire build up in the house. I was trapped, gripping the bone bars and desperately shaking them to get free. As far as I knew, I was going to be burned alive.
Then, I awoke in my bed to my mother's voice. She stood at my bedside, a gentle hand placed on my shoulder. The first conscious words I uttered were, "Mommy, how old am I?"
"You're four, sweety," my mother amusedly answered. The tone of her voice questioned my waking words' origin, but she didn't delve further into it.