A Memory

(This memory isn't mine; it's one of Seven Answers).

My earliest memory is bathing - being bathed, really by my mother - at my grandmother's house.  It's an old house and the water is heated with a coal-fired boiler.  I clearly remember smelling the smoke of the fire and the sweet bubble-bath soap, a combination I don't think I've ever smelled since.  I am not yet three.  The reason I know this is that in the tub with me is a small plastic doll, a crying negro baby with pearly-white hair; I lost this doll shortly after my third birthday, throwing it overboard off a ferry.  The memory is pure perception, I don't associate any good or bad feelings or thoughts with it.