First Memory

It is bathed in a whisky glow: fuzzy, warm and yet clarifying. It is my first memory of anything at all. The scene is illuminated by an otherworldly light, a confounding, angelic brightness. I am two, maybe three. Liberated from some play class, I recall a leaping sensation of delight as I catch sight of my parents. (Usually, it'd be my nanny picking me up, you see: both my parents worked, and still do, in fact.) The day had a definite sense of occasion: an excursion was planned, and I was to be surprised. As I bubble along, babbling excitedly, going in for a hug, my mum brings out, in a deft circular motion, my favourite water bottle. It is purple and yellow and has a screw-on container at the bottom. My delight escalates, my surging about-to-hug motion is slowed, as my mum unscrews the bottom to reveal a pile of peanut butter sandwich biscuits. I still know which ones they are: Khong Guan peanut cream crackers -- peanut butter cream filling sandwiched between two Ritz-like salty cracker rounds. We set off, arm-in-arm, down a path sieged with teeming green. Then nothing else, as I am enveloped in a incandescent haze.