Formative Growth: What would you say is your earliest childhood memory?

This is an interesting question. My oldest thing is the attraction to childhood magic and children in general. When I was just a year old, my birthday was filled with kids and teenagers from our village. Only a handful never turned up.
My papa and mama always welcomed kids even kids whose parents they didn’t know. From a very tender age, my parents would rub other kids’ heads when saying hello, they’d even want to kind of playfully join in their street childhood games before walking away. I watched them interact with kids so freely, may be this kept me away from bullies because they probably loved the way my parents treated them. (I remember being popular in primary school, older kids several grades ahead would keep asking my name and they loved to hear me sing: Brenda Wanjiru Gutu Mathenge Princess… Just because my younger brother’s name is Prince and my grandfather’s name was Mathenge! 😎😂) That’s besides the point though…
There are other memories but this one has stuck. This is how I know: When I got to the university in Nairobi after leaving our small knit village in Ol’kalou, at first I got some kind of culture shock, you know how everyone don’t know everyone and how each is for themselves? It never took long for me to realise that I had better be myself or I’d get lost somewhere in there trying to be like everybody else.
I found myself overtime taking up my parents’ spirit into the Central Business District. I would walk in the streets, spot kids with their parents, I’d talk to them and say hello and smile at their caregivers; almost always people looked at me weirdly. I graduated to admiring unborn babies in their mothers wombs! Every time I met an expectant mom, I would stop and tell her, “you look beautiful”, and, “you both look beautiful.” Some still looked at me bewildered.
My parents’ affinity to children and the magic within them inspired me into a children-respecting human. The ‘weirdo’ looks never stopped me. Imagine just as a second year student, I saw a lonely street boy near Anniversary Towers, and I knew he was lonely because the rest were playing as he sat alone looking low on a Sunday afternoon. I felt for him, we conversed and he told me that he would have wanted to go back home. Long story short I walked with Benson (his real name) all the way to my University hostel room, I boiled buckets of water, gave him a bath after clipping his nails, washed his wounds on thighs for laying on fire embers, and wore him my tiny clothes(he was only 8 years old) and borrowed some tiny clothes from my ‘bewildered’ roommates. I bought him rubber shoes, toothbrush and toothpaste too. We walked hand-in-hand across town to Kamukunji Police Station where I left him and he got assisted through to the children’s remand home (where I was volunteering at the time, so I knew what the outcome would be), months later he was reintegrated with his family.
Even though about 4 months later he was spotted in the streets and I also later saw him again as a street boy before he disappeared after having a glimpse of me, I had dared followed my oldest instinct ingrained in me through my parents.. To nurture children even just for a short moment in time.
The reason I say it is my oldest memory is because I still have a photo album of most of my childhood before my 4 years younger brother broke my father’s camera and there were no more photos… 📸🥺 In those photos I feel that my parents’ personalities shine for their love of children.
It became the oldest thing that I can remember, my earliest childhood memory, and one of the major aspects of my personality. I’m a childhood magic believer and LOVE.
At the University I would introduce myself as Brenda a believer in Love and still, people laughed at me and some took advantage of it… I’m now 31 years old and I still believe!