My First Memory

This is my first post for the class Studies in a Major Author: Vladimir Nabokov.

My first conscious memory that I have been able to hold onto throughout my existence thus far takes place when I was three years old. This is also the only memory of the house that my parents owned at the time of my birth in Dubuque, Iowa. We moved to the Quad Cities just before I turned four. I was in the kitchen with my mother when I caught the faintest scent of cigarette smoke coming from the basement. More than anything else, my father wanted to be a pilot, but we would not have been able to afford his insurance if he was still smoking. I went downstairs while he and my mother discussed something which I doubt that I comprehended at the time. As he was smoking, I would watch as the carcinogenic cloud blew towards me. I watched the smoke as it would slowly float towards the ceiling. When it would get close to me, I would try to blow it away to avoid exhaling the curious fumes. My father quit smoking not long after we moved, but it is still the clearest of my early memories.

Alex White