I have a very long memory. It goes all the way back to my infancy. I have early memories because I have noticed them. I know others have done this, too. According to my research, I estimate that up to 12% of the adults who live in Western cultures have these memories. Two of the four children in my masthead have them. All four remember this photo being taken.

Before we get any further, let me be very clear about two things. The first is the hornet's nest of recovered memory. I am not interested in them. At all. Second, I am not interested in the scientific and cultural consensus that very early memories are inaccessible due to intrapsychic, social, or physiological reasons. The truth is, not much is known about how memory functions at any age. What is known is that many adults are surprised when other adults remember their infancy.

Very early memories are not contrived, but arrive on their own. They are neither recovered nor bidden. When reencountered, early memories feel as though they have been waiting to be noticed, lingering shyly off to the side somewhere. In his article, "The Phenomenology of Forgetting" (1983), Stephen Tyman described my experience of remembering infancy very well. He said, "We know, when we recollect, that somehow we have rescued the remembered from the forgotten" (p. 50). This website is dedicated to those memories.