Back in Time (Pt. 1) 1955

I am going to be exploring my past in a series of entries to come, starting with this one and proceeding more or less chronologically.  I am fascinated by the subject of memory, mind and the brain, and the mysterious, some might say subjective, as well as biological processes, that create our memories.    How do they last?  How and why do they change or become ever so slightly altered over the course of our lives? 

Whenever I try to recall my earliest memory, I always, throughout the many times over the years I have done this, settle on a very specific object and event.  I have no idea why this is the earliest thing I remember — it just always has been. 

I can’t be precise about the year or my age, but I believe it was at a birthday party, for myself, I presume, and I was 4 years old.  That would have been in the Spring of 1955.  A group of parents and children are outside, enjoying cake and ice cream.  I am holding some kind of special bar of soap in the shape of a lamb.  I am quite certain about that detail, in particular.  The scent, the shape, the texture — all those things must have made an indelible impression on my very young mind, for those memory traces have endured and cells and neurons have preserved that memory for 55, almost 56 years.  I will soon be 60.