Young Ian's Earliest Memories

Tonight, at bedtime, I was reading to the boys from a Pete Seeger anthology of stories, some of which are from his own life.  Of course, he's a wonderful story-teller, and I noticed that Daniel rested his head against mine as I lay there reading, as if directly moved by the timelessness of the stories, and of story-telling and -reading itself.  And in response to Pete Seeger's story about a winter that he and  his family spent in North Carolina when he was a baby, Ian spontaneously delivered his own story.  It's not a particularly gripping, or even terribly humorous one, but because it's apparently pretty-much his earliest memory, it's certainly worth re-telling.  And because I have some of my own fondest memories from the time when he was small, it's very moving to hear about that same golden age, lo these several years later, from the very Small One himself.

So here goes:

Ian remembers the first time he fed himself.  He remembers that he always wanted to be fed.  But one time, he wanted us to feed him, but Daddy was too busy talking to Mommy, so he started feeding himself - first wondering if he could really do such a thing, and then finding that he could, and going with it.

At some point, Daddy came around, remembering that Ian had wanted to be fed, and asked if Ian would still like him to feed him, but Ian declined; he was feeding himself now, and he would keep going with it.

The food in question, Ian thinks, was cereal.  When he told the story, I said, "Oh - so was it breakfast?"

"Actually it was evening."

So really it's a tale about a pair of parents who are too busy talking to each other to feed their tiny child, but it might not have been such a big loss, since the "meal," itself, was cereal.

Tonight, I told Ian I was sorry that I didn't feed him.  He considers it a good thing, because it started the phenomenon of Ian feeding himself.

Ian also sometimes recalls how, when he was very small, and Daniel was very smaller, Ian used to chant, "Feed me!  Feed me! Feed me!" whereas Daniel would chant "Feed self! Feed self!  Feed self!"

They say that people's personalities are crystallized at a very young age...

(January 15, 2013)