The first memory is of mountains. Standing on my mother’s lap, I see them out the small window. Gray, black, and dark green, they are crinkled like an old person’s skin, with white snow on top. My aunt is sick. She holds a paper bag over her mouth and throws up quietly, hardly making a sound. She is a big woman with big hair.

The second memory is of my mother telling me I am sleepy because time is different here in California, and I don’t know what that means, but I get to go to bed in the middle of the day in a room with bunk beds, and yellow walls bright with sun.

Then I am in grass over my head, seeing nothing but grass and sky and the heads and shoulders of my cousins, who are chasing a balsa wood glider, mashing down a trail I follow trying to keep up.

Then I am at Disneyland, walking between my mother and aunt down a long broad street toward a tall silver rocket with a red nose and red fins. A door at the bottom opens to pitch darkness. My mom and I sit in soft seats in a circle with other people and see pictures of the stars and moon on the ceiling.

Years later, I tell my mother I still remember these four things from our trip to Disneyland, and I couldn’t have been more than four, I said. You were only two, she said. With all the time that’s passed, I don’t know how I have memories of being two, but I can understand what made those four things indelible. My mother must have said, “Look, Joe. Mountains,” in a way that made them sound fantastic and important. She must have said, “Floy is feeling sick,” in a way that made me feel concerned. Bedtime at midday and my first sight of bunk beds. Cousins like giants in the grass, and a tall rocket with night time and the moon inside.

There comes a point when you’re not sure of your earliest memories, when you no longer recall the moment, but only recall remembering it. If Mom remembered it, I could be sure it happened. When Mom came down with Alzheimer’s, her memories began to fail us. Then her voice could no longer tell me whether she remembered or not. Then she forgot it all. But this small part of it is now yours.