Do I really remember those moments?

It is interesting to think about this phenomenon - our ability to remember things that happened in the past. Have you ever asked yourself how memories are formed in our minds? I have no correct answers; I didn't study this matter thoroughly and my conclusions are not scientifically backed. {If this were a post about finances, I would say this is not financial advice hahaha}

I understand that everything we experience in this life, what we learn - in our conscious and unconscious is processed and stored in some kind of files in our brain. To what extent we can extract this information and memories depends on the triggers and our ability to let these stored data come to light. Those are moments we lived one day and we can recall them... but can we remember the moments we lived in our very early childhood?

We were told that the earliest memories we can recall date back to when we were about four or five years old. It was confusing... as I thought I was remembering some moments that happened when I was younger. Fortunately, some new studies say people can recall memories as young as two and a half years old. Good - it seems that I am not crazy!

What happens is that I remember - or I think that I remember this garden and all the cacti my grandmother had. According to these photos, I was playing there, with some petals in the puddle after a rain, in the cracks of the old concrete.

That is me - I know my face is not seen here but I clearly remember that I was running away from the photo cameras. I was hiding when my parents wanted to take a photo of us, so it was easier to capture that little mi when she was not aware of the presence of the photo camera. That phase lasted for some years.

Besides many cacti (you can see only a part of them in this picture), my grandma had many indoor plants and roses in the garden. It was an old house where I was born and lived in my early childhood before we moved to the new house when my parents finished the construction of it.

Grandma felt sad to leave that place, as did I. That was the house where I fell into the basement (and survived - without many consequences 😁)... where I ate soap and ran from my mom who wanted to catch me and take it out of my mouth... where I ate flour while my grandma was baking and where I remember my first Christmas and my parents holding me and sister in their hands and showing toward the sky and stars. The star which guided the Three Wise Men... It was also the house where we had the old grand piano - my first contact with a musical instrument that in a way became part of me.

I found this morning these photos from an old photo album - I know these are not digital photos, but I was born in times when only analogue cameras existed. Do I really remember the shared memories or they were just told so many times by my family that I formed them as my memories?