Robin Fivush

I know if I remember my father, it had to be something that happened before I was three.

And I actually have two memories of my father.

They are very strong images and sense perceptions of being with him.

One is actually we were visiting caverns, underground caverns in upstate New York.

I believe they're called house caverns.

My sister is about three years older than me.

This is my mother, my father.

And I was on my father's shoulders.

And I remember the feeling of being on his shoulders.

And then suddenly things going very dark because they turned off all the lights in the cave.

and feeling safe.

And that's it.

That's the whole memory.

I was sitting on his shoulders.

And of course, obviously, that's a super meaningful memory to me because I have so little of my father, so little of that security of having my father there to protect me and support me.

The other memory is much more mundane.

I remember him giving me a bath.

I'm sure it was devastating.

You know, I was three.

So my experience was just my life was yanked out, but I didn't have a full cognitive understanding of the context and what was going on.