Earliest Memories

Fiorella's earliest memory is of getting on a train, which years later she learned was when she was two years old and her mother was taking her to visit Aunt Ju and Uncle Brownie in Altoona. She doesn't remember anything else about the trip, even that her great aunts and uncles taught her some Russian--nothing but getting on the train.

Another memory from age two is falling down the stairs.  There was the wonderful sensation of being airborne and the realization that it would hurt when she hit the bottom. And it did.

A couple of other memories are probably from when she was three--sitting under Mother's pie-crust table and listening to the ladies at the shower Mother was giving for Lois, who lived in the house up the hill; wandering into the bedroom her grandmother and great aunt were using while they visited and Great Aunt telling her she ate little girls before breakfast; finding a door she hadn't noticed before at the end of the upstairs hall, opening it, and emerging onto the roof of the back porch. She remembers the moment as magical, but when she reminded her mother of the incident years later, Mother told Fio the part she still doesn't remember, that her mother and Aunt Julie were in the backyard and, horrified that Fio might fall off the roof, Aunt circled around inside the house to lure Fio back inside while Mother kept her occupied outside. 

That period ended when Fio was three and Mother was brought home on a gurney with a new baby beside her.  The whole neighborhood gathered around, but Fiorella became the star of the show when she looked at the baby and announced, "He's wide asleep." 

Thus began a whole new set of memories, which Fio will record at a later date.