My earliest childhood memory is painted in my mind in sepia. I am sure this is because of the photos of the house I have seen over the years.
The single story house with the tin roof and the porch along the front like a fringe cut with a ruler. Wooden plank walls and windows like eyes peering out from under the fringe. The two concrete steps becoming the upper and lower lips and from these lips poured the tongue like path. The path riddled with cracks and bumps went straight down the letterbox by the gate that kept me inside the front yard.
My memory is of the wind blowing my small body on short legs into a flat out run down the path. The wind pushing and buffeting my body until the speed I ran tilted me perpendicular to the path, the push too much for my small body to stay upright. Over I tumbled into the hard unyielding concrete. My chest coming into hard contact with the path and all the air was expelled out of my mouth. I lay with a mouth wide open, gasping like a fish out of water.
Strong arms picked me up and patted my back until the air once again moved into my lungs, and once air was available out came the wailing and the big fat tears. I think this memory of the wind is the seed for my relationship I have with the wind and it many twists and turns.
I can look at old photos of the house, overlaying the picture is the running, the wind and the breathless gasping for air.
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