My earliest memories are from around 1976 when I was three years old and we were living in Boston. I remember playing on the sidewalk, I remember our bedroom a bit, and I remember being scared of the front windows at night when the blinds were open (I mean, who isn’t scared of that nighttime reflection?).

Since I know these memories are from Boston, and because we moved away when I was three, it’s pretty easy to nail down how old I was for these memories.

(I’ve found it helpful to have moved at strategic points of my life/childhood, so it’s easier to figure out how old I was or what year it was when I think of certain memories.)

This photo of me is from probably 1975, possibly before my earliest memories. I have no idea what I’m eating. But I like that I was able to be trusted with a potentially-messy plate of food at that age. I also love just how obvious it was about what my hair was going to do later.

This version of me has no idea what’s coming, but she did know she was loved, and she felt safe with her mom and sister.

Here’s a Google Street View image of the brownstone I’m pretty sure we lived in. The left side I think, next to the church. We lived on two of the floors, and the other floors had other families. The church next door burned down while we lived there, and our backyard and basement flooded when the firefighters worked to put out the flames. I credit this experience to making me extremely worried about fires for a long time.

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