I don't have clear memories of individual things as a child, but I have a clear memory of the sensations of my childhood.

My mother's laugh.
She has a "true" laugh, that comes all the way from her belly up through her chest and it makes her whole face shine.
She used Southern phrases more often back then, and they crept into my speech. "More than Carter has pills" (this is funny when you have a cousin named Carter) and "Oh my stars and garters" (thank you Beast in X-Men for bringing that phrase back!)

We would sing Diana Ross and the Supremes in the house, shouting out Love Child as we danced around the living room or the kitchen, with her cocking her hip out so we could The Bump. (We still do this, by the way, but she doesn't have to cock her hip out so much since we're the same height.)

The scent of my little brother's sweat before he could actually "sweat" like an adult. Young children don't stink with sweat, they smell like outside and powder-y, like talc. He would crawl into bed with me on weekend mornings, smelling just like that, and stare at me until I woke up, his chubby little hands pillowing his equally chubby little cheek and a huge smile on his face.

The burn of cold on my face when I fell in the snow.

The glow behind my eyelids when I went on a field trip with my KinderCare teacher- she had teenage sons who I, at four or five, adored in the way only children can. They played games with me, listened to me, and I thought they were awesome. One of them, blond and looking a little like Billy Idol in my memory, was telling me a story on the bus and I'd fallen asleep on him.

The vibration up my arms of the mallet on a Whack-a-Mole game connecting with the head of a poor little fake mole.

I've forgotten most of the bad things, which is both a blessing and a curse. I don't remember pain in my childhood, not in the way that I remember these. These are memories that I can pull up and be right back in that piece of time; the painful ones are more like a taste, or a scent, that just won't go away.

I was watching the Today show the other day and Marilu Henner was on discussing autobiographical memory and how she is one of six people who have been verified to have it. She literally remembered everything about every day of her life. She could pick out some obscure day in 1988 and tell you what she did, where she was, what she wore, and what day of the week it was. It was amazing.

I'm kind of glad I don't have that because with the memories of each of those days there would be some not so great moments and she sort of admitted to feeling the emotions of those days as if she were reliving the moment. There are a lot of days I don't really want to remember. I have blips, brief flashes, a room, a face. The funeral home where my grandmother's funeral was held, the way she looked in her coffin, the scratchy fabric on the pews at church, the way my head itched having to wear the angel's halo in the Christmas pageant at church. Brief flashes and sensations, I couldn't tell you the day of the week or what I had for breakfast.

I know each of us have all of our memories down to the moment carefully stored away in those immense portions of our brains we never use. Recall, is the challenge and being able to access the information is what is difficult.

For example, my earliest memory I recall is my first asthma attack. I was about 2 1/2, I remember being terrified and not being able to breathe. I remember the pink blanket they wrapped me in because it was winter, I remember panicking at the hospital when they put the oxygen mask on me and I remember the cold table they put me on when they took x-rays of my chest.

I remember being 2 or 3, spending the night at my grandparents house. My Nana would take me out to the porch swing and sing to me and swing until I fell asleep. I remember the creak and pop of the chains that held the swing to the patio roof. I remember the creak of the wood on the swing. Sometimes my grandpa would come out and sit several feet away to smoke a cigarette. Grandma wouldn't allow him to smoke near me, back to that asthma thing. I remember it being a fun game to play when grandpa would go outside after dark, I'd find him by looking for the red dot of the burning end of his cigarette seeming to float through the backyard like an angry firefly.

I remember being 4 or 5, winter again, it was already dark and my mother was due to be home any minute. She came in and took off her coat, she was dressed in scrubs because she worked for a dental office. "Pick a pocket!" she always said and I'd pick one of the two pockets on the front of her scrub shirt and pull out a piece of Trident gum. Of course, I always guessed the right pocket.

And, there are flashes of the sidewalk as I walked home from school. Windy spring afternoons spinning on the school yard with my friends until we fell down. Playing hide and seek with all the kids in the neighborhood after school. Knowing it was time to go in when the street light came on, I don't remember when I was told that that was the rule. I just remember the second that street light was on I was making for the front door as fast as I could.

Blips, flashes and after this recall I have to think maybe it might be nice to have autobiographical memory for a couple of days.