the beginning of an old old story start--

--with what i would call my first memory.
It wasn't what i'd call real, it was an image of something that felt right: a blossoming pink tree.
People all seemed to have first memories; i remember once in a Sizzler with a bunch of single digit classmates talking. One girl remembered her mother's breast milk being spicy from being at a mexican restaurant. (Thinking back on this, i have to wonder how old she was when she stopped breast feeding.)

At sometime around four, i realized my memories had no chronology, and some of my strongest memories were denied any reality. There is a knowing you get when your reality is constantly being challenged. When your sister is always making stuff up, and your mother is ditheringly tired, and your father is a picture of a blanket of sleeping bags in an operating theater.
You can watch life prove you right after the fact over and over again for ages.
Not that it helps.
Then.