Memories, Dreams and Time 

Fleeing

     I have gone to great lengths to forget them. I have awakened where the air smells different, and the walls are no longer white; the top three colors in a rainbow’s arch warm the rooms. Faces on the sidewalks are not familiar, and the ground is soft. Expensive treks; moves to shift everything.

Oliver Sacks wrote, “One may be born with the potential for a prodigious memory, but one is not born with a disposition to recollect; this comes only with changes and separation in life-…”¹

Contemporary research on the subject of memory suggests that in working so hard to forget, I may be creating the best paths for remembering.

Pen & Page

My pen hits my page to story out a lovely moment from childhood in which I am hugging my pony’s neck, my face buried ...

I knew time was speeding up when I was seven. Summer vacation after second grade went far quicker than the summer after kindergarten. A year that is worth only one seventh of a lifetime goes much faster than a year worth only one fifth of a lifetime. In the grand summer days of being five I wandered across the pastures and meadows and paused to play horseshoes with grandpa. Nighttime was so far away each day I had time to ride my pony after naptime; naptime, always the excruciatingly longest piece of a day.

My bedroom window opens outward with a crank. I unwind the window and smell the lush green three stories below; a sugar flier has pasted himself to the cedar shakes of the roof’s peak. His eyes blink in the morning drizzle and I wonder if he meant to sail home before first light. The dampness walks into my bedroom as the open window offers me a breath. Misty coolness slaps at my face as I hang my head outside to sniff the fields beyond the 120 acres that is home.

The robin on the oak tree sings that it’s time for chores with grandpa, who says the birds tell him when to do the chores and when to go to bed. The finches broadcast the day, and the mockingbirds are guides through the darkness, sometimes meowing like the barn cats when the moon is bright. 

The steam is building on the ceiling of grandma’s kitchen; she has four pots going at once on her cast iron stove. I am waiting for the ginger and cinnamon scented droplets to form on the ceiling and fall on my head. They will mix in with the dough for the pie crust in the bowl next to me, and they’ll water down grandma’s lumpy turkey gravy. They’ll make the thick, scratched and ragged but polished wooden floor boards slippery, and grandma will say “Fiddlesticks!” as she slides between the stove, the counter top and the table. “Go play with your cousins!” I shield my shortbread and jam with my plate; shortbread works like a sponge, and wait until she tells me again to get out of the way.

Christina and Ella are in the bathroom applying... makeup, trading beauty tips and exchanging clothing. I hear them whisper as I sit outside the door. The boys are in the field building something. Grandpa sees that I play alone at family gatherings. He waves me toward the garage.

His two-tone forest green and cream VW Bus ...