My first memory #evernighties

When I was 7 years old something really traumatic happened to me, and I remember nothing of my life before that. Even the years after are just a chaotic mess of blurs and odd flashes. I am not even sure I have what one could call real childhood memories, at least not many, and certainly not very coherent.

But the few things that stand vividly out in my memory are all art related. I remember drawing a heard of cows and the delight I felt when I got a cow with her head turned up to mooo exactly right. It was something about the shape of the muzzle, and the way the neck aligned with the head.

I don’t remember breaking my right arm, but I do remember the German Shepherd dog standing by his dog house that I drew *with my left hand* because my right one was all done up in plaster.

And I remember the wondrous discovery (I must have been nine or so, I think) that the sky is not a thin line of blue at the top, but that the blue goes all the way down to the tree-tops. When I shared this amazing this discovery with my then best friend, Francesca, also a talented artist, we lay hands on all blue markers in the classroom and made this huge drawing (huge for us at least… I think it was an A3 sheet) with all manners of animals and grass and trees, and above that, everything was coloured blue.

I was very amused when I read the same observation years later in a book by Terry Pratchett.

I used to draw all the time. I made stories in my head, and scrawled sketches on any odd bit of paper, like a sort of scattered, fragmented comic book. But I never drew another cow, as far as I know, and I forgot how to draw with my left hand as soon as my right was healed, which is a pity, since I broke my right arm once more twenty-five years later.