It all starts with a memory of getting into, or out of, a wooden trailer being pulled behind a snowmobile. I feel like I can remember that it was made of plywood. I don’t know how I would have known that, though. It was on a flat, snowy area; there were trees around, and sheds—perhaps made out of corrugated iron.
Having spoken to Mum and Dad about this memory, they think the place is Wabamun, and I was about one and a half.
Wabamun is a lake not far from Edmonton, Alberta. We stayed in Edmonton on and off between 1972 and 1977. Those are my guesstimate dates. I could probably get more accurate ones from Mum and Dad, but I’m not so sure they’ll remember—and they’d probably argue about it.
It strikes me that I use the phrase Mum and Dad rather than my parents.
The next couple of memories I always bundle together, but I’m not sure they were that close together in time. One is a memory of being in a hotel lobby. There were those fancy luggage trolleys with posts that curve over to join in the middle at the top. Matt and I were pushing each other around the lobby on them. It feels like we had been in the lobby for ages. I don’t know if that’s true—my experience of hotel lobbies is that you pass through them fairly quickly, even when checking in.
At some point, I managed to crash into a wall, and a dado rail at eyebrow height split my head open. I started gushing blood everywhere. I had to go to hospital—this is my first memory of going to hospital.
I’ve just made the connection between this and the next memory: injury.
The next memory is outside—a big grey building with stone pillars, green grass, and a slope running down with steps on the sides. There were huge dandelion clocks everywhere. Matt ran down the hill, and when he got to the bottom, he was going too fast and piled into the ground, banging his forehead. He had a massive purple bruise on his head after that.