I don’t understand the question “What is your first childhood memory?”  Is it even possible to know?

I remember being pushed in a stroller, pushing my own doll carriage as my parents and I took a walk, driving my plastic toddler tricycle–designed to look like a motorcycle-down the path to our townhouse complex’s garden.  I remember eating dinner with my parents in that garden.  (A very early memory indeed since it didn’t take long after my birth for their relationship to turn to complete shit.)  At at least one of those dinners, I know we had lamb chops with mint jelly.

I remember wearing water wings in the swimming pool.  I remember having chicken pox, which gave me fever-induced nightmares about my father.  I sort of remember my mormor (maternal grandmother), and I definitely remember her asher and wienerbrod.  (I have not been able to find an almond danish that could rival hers.)  I remember playing in my turtle-shaped sandbox and hanging out in the cardboard playhouse on the deck outside my parents’ bedroom.

I have many memories of my early childhood, but I don’t have the faintest idea which is my first.

I will admit there was one time when I had respect for my dad’s fourth.

It happened one evening when the three of us went out for dinner and a movie.  My dad dropped us off with his assumption that Ellie and I would get a table while he parked the car.  When he returned, he was dismayed to see that we simply waited for him outside the restaurant.  Bear in mind, there was no wait at the restaurant at all, nor did he have reason to think that there would be.  It was yet another instance of Mr. Skornia getting unreasonably peeved over nothing at all.

He would not let it go.  We went into the restaurant, sat down at the table, perused our menus, all while he was bitching at Ellie for not reading his mind.  She eventually got fed up and stalked out of the restaurant.  Dad followed her to get her to come back, but no dice.  She had her purse, but not her house keys, and we were a good 25 miles from home.  She took the train back to San Jose and waited at a neighbor’s for Dad and me to return.

I had mad respect for her that day.  If only more women in my father’s life had done that sort of thing more often.  He might have learned to control his temper a little earlier in his life.

I hate to harp on the craziness of my father’s ex-wife (Oh, who am I kidding?  I love to do this.), but I have a classic crazy story about her.  It doesn’t even involve my teenage antics.

Sometime early in their marriage, even before I moved in, Ms. Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She opted for a double mastectomy with no implants.  She wanted to nip a chance of reoccurrence in the other breast in the bud, and she was pretty much unattached to her breasts.  (Yeah, that’s weird.)  The appointment for the surgery was all set.  There was just one problem:  she never told my father about any of it.

The night before the surgery, my father was checking his answering machine.  There was a message from the hospital confirming the appointment for the surgery.  Busted!  Seriously, though, what was she thinking?  She was counting on disappearing for a couple days and then showing up completely flat chested?  Like my father wouldn’t notice?

I guess I can understand simply not wanting to deal with the problem, and there are people like this who just can’t face it and choose not to get treatment at all.  I could even understand her walking out on my father if she simply couldn’t deal with the possibility of her illness putting a strain on their marriage.  But simply not telling him?  Letting him worry for a couple of days when she disappears and turning up again post-op?  She was sixty years old, way too old for that kind of immature, bizarre behavior.

A photo of my mother.  The first of many as I try to digitize my entire photo collection.

Jerry Brown and Kirsten Olsen circa 1978?

My father’s fourth wife was the queen of passive aggression.  It chapped her ass that I would go to my room to watch TV and study after school, because clearly I should want to spend time in the cold, drab kitchen with her while she watched sports*.

Her solution to her annoyance was to call me down to dinner via a dinner bell.  She couldn’t come up to my room and knock on the door.  She couldn’t even set a specific time for dinner and simply ask me to be punctual.  Nope, not Ellie Smith.  She had a knack for finding the most absurd methods of getting even for real or (usually) perceived slights.

Understandably, it annoyed me to be called down to dinner in this manner.  One afternoon after school before ma bête-mère came home, simply out of curiosity, I picked up the bell from its resting place next to the kitchen table and examined it.  I discovered how to remove the, um, clangy thing in the middle.  (Aha!  The dictionary saves me yet again.)  I figured out how to remove the clapper from inside the bell.  It was simply a matter of unscrewing the top of the bell’s handle.  Loosen it enough and the clapper fell out.  I put it back in but left it loose, just loose enough for what I hoped would happen later that night.

At around 7 p.m., I heard a clank, clank, thud.  The clapper flew out of the bell and hit the floor.  All the king’s horses and wife number four couldn’t put the bell back together again.

Problem solved!  Until she decided to call me on the phone to inform me dinner was ready.

*The really frustrating thing is that, even had I done what she supposedly wanted, she still wouldn’t have been satisfied.  If I had hung around too much, she would have found an excuse to be get upset; she likely would have decided that I was cramping her style.  She certainly didn’t like it when I had dinner with her.  I had an unfortunate habit of speaking my mind.