We all have memories, don't we?

Some would call them memoirs, some would call them memories, The latter being, if you are more down to earth I think and maybe more the way that I would say it. Who knows, it still comes down to the same thing. A memory that is. It is maybe long forgotten only to be triggered by an incident, a stray remark or a gesture by an innocent bystander.

All I can say is that any of the above did apply to me. I had carried this memory around most of my life. However, it was not something I thought about on a daily basis. Far from it. But from time to time it popped up. It could happen in a conversation with a family member or an episode, a dialogue with friends or a situation involving complete strangers that suddenly reminded me. I wouldn't mention anything, because it would have been totally out of context, but the trigger of the memory always intrigued me. What was it that suddenly made me think of it?

Suffice to say that I will probably never know.

Now you will be impatient to know what that memory is. We'll come to that in a minute.
But first I think I have to give you some of the background.

I was born back at the start of the nineteen fifties, and certainly not the usual start for most babies. My mother felt she couldn't bring me up properly, so on the day of my birth, I was given away for adoption. What that meant was that once I was well enough to leave the hospital where I was born, I was handed over to an orphanage, where, as it turned out, I spent my first couple of years of my life.

As this is not going to be a biography, it will be enough to say that I was probably as happy as could be expected there, during those first two years.

Then something drastic must have happened. That is to say, something that totally changed my life, or at least something that changed my daily routine.
But being so young it is not entirely a conscious memory. How could it be? Some would say it was just not possible that I could remember anything and a few of those I have ever told what I do remember, have said exactly that to me.

I happen to know differently though.

I was in a bed, a bed just placed behind the door that opened into the room. If there were other beds in that room I will never be able to say. I have no recollection of that and it is also irrelevant to my memory or my memoir.

What I do remember though, is the colour of the wall that I faced, when I was lying in that bed. It was green. Not dark green nor really light green, but a green that resembles more the colour of an olive. Of course back then I wouldn't have be able to recognize that. It is only today that I know that was the colour of green I was looking at.

Oh, the impression is just so vivid. In my hands, I clutched a pair of leather boots looking onto that wall, and I just felt so happy. And I do remember it as if it was yesterday!

I didn't know who had given me those boots, but what I did know was that it was the first gift I had ever received in my life. Of course I couldn't form the word gift in my wee brain, I just didn't know what that meant. But what I did understand was that I had received something that was for me alone, which gave me that feeling of happiness that was earth shattering in my little world.

I slept with them every night and nobody was ever allowed to remove them from my bed.

This is my memoir.
It was only much later that I realised what was behind it.

The couple who had found me and who wanted to adopt me gave me that pair of boots. It was late November and in the part of the world where we lived it was winter with snow on the ground. They simply felt that I needed them as my feet were just clad in a pair of normal shoes.

To this day I still have those small boots, and they are beautiful. All leather and lined with real fur.

Not only are they cute but one of my dearest possessions.