Earliest Memory

I remember myself loving ballet when I was a young girl. Wait, scratch that. I still love ballet to this very day, I just no longer dance. My mom wasn’t wealthy when I was little, but she did whatever she could to make her little princess happy. Things were a bit easier at that point in our lives, seeing that my father was in the picture for a short period of time. I was a little diva and my mom gave me whatever my heart desired, so when I asked to be a pretty ballerina of course my mom signed me up for classes. I didn’t know what I was getting into because I was so little, but for some reason I eventually hated the classes. Granted, I was only three, so I shouldn’t have been making decisions like that for myself anyways.

One class is particularly stuck in my brain as it was quite a traumatizing experience. I remember having class and participating in the normal dance steps. They involved the most basic skills. A Plié here, a twirl there. I can never recall the steps these days and even looking at old performance recordings seems as if I’m watching a complete and utter stranger. When the class had finally ended, I raced down the studio steps with the other dancers, my colorful beads bouncing up and down as I sprinted to the bottom. My head spun around as I looked around excitedly for my parents and my smile soon faded as I realized that they weren’t there yet. My teacher saw me standing alone after a while and came over to inquire about my mom and dad. Seeing that they weren’t there yet, she nodded her head and arbitrarily walked in another direction. I entered panic mode after a few moments, thinking that I had been abandoned at the studio. I dashed back up the hard, steep stairs and quickly ducked back into the familiar dance room. Upon, catching my breath, loud, giggly voices began to echo in the nearby hall. More girls were coming! My heart was thundering out of my chest as I darted around the room for a place to hide. I settled for a towering, gray metal cabinet while trying to control my labored breathing. Older girls fluttered into the room chatting loudly as they prepared for their upcoming class.

Panicked, I waited quietly as the class finished filing in. At this point it is imperative that I mention that my memory of the event is pretty hazy of the next few scenes. I distinctly remember one of the students flouncing over to my secret spot and calling out to the others. A teacher found me then, huddled and exposed. A time gap sits in my hippocampus (part of the brain responsible for memory) and I can only recall being in my mom and dad’s little white car. I was being yelled at for hiding and leaving.

It wouldn’t be fair in this story to make my parents seem like the villains, so it only seems right to tell the whole tale. My mom told me afterwards that it actually wasn’t their fault. To anyone who knows my mother, she is considered extremely responsible and overprotective. I knew that she wouldn’t intentionally leave me somewhere so I questioned what happened that day. I was told that in actuality she was across the street at a small café looking out the enormous glass window waiting for my class to end. She and my father used to sit and eat there every ballet class until I had finished. That particular day, it just so happened that my class ended early and when she had gone to retrieve me, I was nowhere to be found. My mom had a panic attack and passed out in the middle of the street and when she finally came to, she and my dad found me.

My side may seem more dramatic, but it’s absolutely awful to think about what I put my mom through. I cannot fathom why I would do such a thing to her, but I mustn’t beat myself up too much because after all I was only about three or four years old. I really can understand how much my mom cares about me after hearing what she went through. She describes the experience as traumatic because she thought something had happened to her baby girl. I truly realized how much she cared after hearing about this.