Writing Prompt-First Memory

The writing prompt book lead me to "a character remembers their earliest memory"

So here is a brief essay on mine...


I did not learn how to ride a bicycle until I was 11. A child psychologist (one of many) thought me on the grounds outside his office. Because he worked from home and his office was a wooden building on short stilts in the hills above Rio Piedras. He was legally blind and had a "computer that talks to me." At the time I thought it magical. Like the ice in A Hundred Years of Solitude but, as an adult, I learned it was a simple few keystrokes on any Windows OS. The psychologist made me read Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and once let sit in silence for the whole 30 minute session. And he taught me how to ride a bike. Which replaced the red and white push scooter I had which had replaced the Big Wheel.

That was my first ride. First "whip" as I learned in my mid 30s was another way of saying car. The Big Wheel in Rainbow Chiclet colors. Yellow chassis with hot pink handle bars and ooze green pedals.

In my earliest memory the Big Wheel flies out from under me as my mother yanks me up from the sidewalk. The sky has turned a foreboding orange the color of Mars. She is wearing a yellow jumpsuit and white leather sandals. Her hair is a short bob with bangs that frame her face. She is 40 but is often mistake for someone 29 years old. At least that is what she tells me at home.

It's mid September but seasons were something I would miss until age 18. Instead it was nice until it wasn't and my mother pulled me up and into the house.

The tiny island of Puerto Rico is shaped like a classic tube of toothpaste. At the far eastern end of its 110 mile length the spots of land twist onto each other making switchback trails over inky marinas. The eastern end typically takes it the worst from hurricanes. Another method is for one to swing right through the center until the entire island is covered in a atmospheric bomb five times it size. But Hurricane Hugo in September 1989 grazed along the northeast side dropping 10 inches of rain and winds of 104 miles per hour. 

We did not live in the northeast but even the modest 40 miles between us and the tip of the island in Fajardo offered us some protection. It was a hard yet glancing blow. The worst stubbed toe you could ever received. And the El Yunque rain forest with its lofty by Caribbean standard peaks shielded everything behind it. After the storm my father would drive me out there to see shucked trees standing naked in the wet earth.

After this the memory crystallizes into sharp lucidity. My sister and I are in my parents master bath.

An aside on my parents bathroom. I've mentioned before how they were 80s yuppies with a mix of barrio slapdash and Dallas gaudy. The bathroom lived to the master name. A marble sink shaped like a scallop shell into a six foot counter top. Behind it a walk in closet that seemed to have nothing in there except my mother's. The tiles on the floor were burnt tan insets with large spaces in between them. There was a step up into the same shaped tiles except now they were blue the color of well worn Jean's. This area was smaller dominated by a marble tub set into the side and flanked by a toilet and bidet. And outside, past a metal shutter window, our backyard.

In my memory the bathroom is mid-day dark. That is a phrase I made up to describe the twilight of when the power goes out mid-day. The sun is out yet inside it is twilight. Growing up in Puerto Rico you get used to mid-day dark. Outside the sun shines but life feels different. Going inside will often be a disappointment.

The only light is the haze coming in through the storm. This is very different than a thunderstorm crossing across the plains or beating up a waterspout on The Great Lakes. Here there some light and contrasted with the darkness of the room it appears as a supernova outside. In my memory I feel a weight coming from the window that is overpowering yet aside everything is movement. My mother had let us open the shutters briefly to see. The lime tree in our backyard appeared sinister. Free of any leaves it had a storybook element to it, the last tree before crossing the mire to the witch's house, all black and covered in moving thorns. 

My mother then comes and closes the shudders just enough so the light comes through the slits My sister and I return to a game of dominoes we had been playing. With wooden dominoes embossed with animals. The six-six domino (the domino I believed to have the most power) was a tiger.  In the last segment of my memory I recall their texture.Glossy and smooth on top and then prickly wood on the side.