A Toddler's Fear

I've always been fascinated by words, by the way our lives revolve around the ability to use and redefine the words that we live in, through, and by. Our earliest memories are often pre-verbal. How then do we store them? Is it by the emotions, the feelings they evoke? Are those memories accurate? What about the earliest dreams we recall?

There is a recurring nightmare I had, from as far back as I could remember. It made no sense to me for many years. I was with my father, in a car. We were on a trip, and ate at a drive-in. This was in the mid-1950s, when I was about 2 years or so. I know it is based in reality, because family spoke of Dad taking me, in my words, 'on a pica-nic in 'tucky' - yes, Kentucky. The dream was nice at first, root beer, hot dogs, but then it changed, and there was a small grey stone building - a roadhouse of some sort? - and a man angry at Dad, and words exchanged. Some were about him bringing me. The dream deteriorated into a sort of pirate-y sword duel and I always woke screaming cause Dad killed the angry man.

I was still having this dream when I was 18-19. It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that I learned more of this. I learned mom left dad, she took me and my 1/2 sis to her mom in Kentucky. She left us there and went to Indiana where her brother and his family lived, and took a job at a drugstore soda fountain.

Dad was never one to lose an argument. He took his first weekend free and drove to Gramma's. There he took me, leaving my sister with her father's mother and in school, and told Gran that he'd 'work it out' with Mom. Well, that he did, sort of. He took me back to his place, shared with his sister and her husband and daughter, and told Mom, "You'll get your butt back here if you ever want to see your daughter." She did... after several months.

But.. what I wonder.. is just how much of that drive was real, that I dreamed of, and semi-recalled.. and how much of it was exaggerated by my fear of Dad's anger. He was always an angry man.. and I was a timid thing back then. How much can a child truly recall?

Mom says I used to pick cacti from her flower pots and bring them to her when they bloomed. I can almost remember that, but then, is it merely the power of suggestion? I was barely 1-2 then. And yet, I had a clear and distinct fear of touching electrical outlets for as long as I remembered which continues to this day - and she did tell of me putting a fork in an outlet.

If these memories are only fantasies, or dreams, or nightmares, but they have a real affect on the rememberer, are they as valid as the 'truer' memories that others had?