Last week when I was out to dinner with a client, the sales guy who was with us brought up the topic of what the earliest memories are that we can recall. He claims he's able to remember things that happened from when he was 6 months old. I wonder if the memories are real or have been created from stories he's been told by other family members. I can remember being about 3 or 4 and arguing with my parents about a piece of shrubbery that had been planted in the side yard below my bedroom window. It was small compared to some of the other bushes that had grown tall in just the few years we'd been in the house. I insisted that I had taken a piece of a larger yew and stuck it in the ground, thus "planting" the smaller one. I was convinced of this and can still feel the passion of the argument. My parents laughed and reminded me that they had planted the shrub, at which I stamped my foot and burst into tears, so frustrated that they didn't believe me. I can also remember feeding my sister. She was born when I was 3 years and 8 months old, so she would have been eating solid food at about the time I turned 4. I have vague recollections of our Siamese cat Rama, who died before my sister was born. But nothing solid from any earlier than that.

Rebecca is in 7th grade, a time of great dramas, shifting alliances and nascent feelings for that other species, boys. When I was in 7th grade I had a friend whose mother had only been 19 when my friend was born. How cool to have such a young mother (she was younger then than my mother was when I was born). She wore fashionable clothing in a way that fit her, was an artist, had designed their amazing house, and hosted great parties. I wanted her to be my mother. Although I recognized that my mom had a graduate degree in education and that my friend's mother had barely finished high school, that didn't matter when I was 12 and just wanted to be part of a family that was not my own.