Creating Memories

What does it mean when your first memory is a lie? Can your life start that way without it completely messing you up?

When I was 18 months old, I broke my arm. Until I was 13 years old, I thought that my arm broke after I had fallen off the couch on our porch. In fact, I remembered it happening - I can still picture the tile floor coming closer to my face as I fell.

Then, on the day my oldest brother got married, I learned the truth. My brother is 8 years older than me so he must have been 9 at the time I broke my arm. He was 22 on the day he got married and I was 13, going on 14. My brother had just graduated from college and was marrying a woman whose family was much stronger in their religious faith than ours. At that point he had not completely given himself over to God, like he has now, but perhaps their influence caused him to feel the need to tell me what really happened 11 years before...

The funny thing is that I don't have a clear memory of the conversation that my brother and I had on his wedding day. I just remember that he finally came clean and told me and my mother - and maybe our other siblings too - that he had been carrying me that day - probably I was squirming - and he dropped me on the floor in the porch. I must have screamed pretty loud because he took off running so fast that he broke the screen door off its hinges. He ran all the way down the street. I don't know what happened next. I have some pictures of me in a cast and somehow they feel like a memory but that's where the story ends.