My earliest memory of life on this earth is of my family sitting at the dining room table, and I'm feeling a bit panicked. After sitting in uncomfortable silence for a while, I say, "I think I have a problem here", and point to a piece of corn that I stuck up my nostril.
I also remember waiting to leave for the park on my sixth birthday. We lived on a cul-de-sac and I discovered that it echoed quite nicely on that street. "Ladybug!" I shouted, over and over. And over and over, my echo would come back: "Ladybug!" I was wearing a blue and white checkered shirt with daisies on it.
I remember being picked up and skated off of the rink by Sonny the ref. on skate night, after a teenage boy had knocked me over. Sonny asked me which man was my father and I pointed him out with my unbroken arm. I remember being in the ER after that, but I can't remember leaving the building or getting my skates taken off.
Mom used to put a tupperware cup on our cheeks to collect our tears when we would cry. When we finished, she would hand the cup to us and tell us to drink it. She called it Alligator Soup.
The last time I wrote a bike, I was eight. I was trying to get over my 'childhood' fear of them - actually, Dad was trying to get me over my fear of them. I didn't mind a distance between us. But Dad made me ride up and down the street until I could do it without complaining. I never rode a bike after that day, though, because even if I stopped complaining to HIM... I never got over the insecurity of being on two wheels.
I think that of all my memories, the one that makes me the saddest is the day that Mom took me to LA to see Grandad in the hospital. It was the last time that any of us ever saw him and I don't know why she took only me. I don't remember much of that visit at all, but I do remember that Mom read to him out of the Bible. She sat on a chair near the bed, and I sat in a chair near the window, watching with polite curiosity. He'd been sick for a long time, and had lost a lot of weight and grown a shaggy beard. I remember thinking to myself that he looked something like what Noah must have. (I don't know why I picked Noah... maybe we'd just read about the flood in Sunday school or something.) Hazy as all that is, the memory of walking down the hall and back to our car is incredibly distinct. I was aware of the fact that Mom was crying, and I remember looking up at her and whispering (so that I might not offend anyone else), "Who was that man?"
One day during lunch hour, Dad picked me up from school and took me to the optometrist to pick up my first pair of glasses. I walked back onto campus with him and looked up at the big trees that stood over the lunch-yard. I was astounded that the green blob was actually made up of individual leaves.
Around Christmas one year, it rained steadily for almost a week. Kate and I went to the park to collect pine cones and leaves for a wreath that we were making, and it was - of course - raining like crazy. Instead of collecting things like we'd intended to, we laid on top of picnic tables in the middle of the park and talked for an hour.
Last summer in Prague, we took a stroll on Charles Bridge in the middle of the night. I can still see the moon above St. Vitus Cathedral, and how the statues of the saints looked, silhouetted against the sky. But I especially remember two swans that swam below the bridge, slowly and consistently together. And I thought, This must be love. Love of a city, love of a person, love of the world, love of life. How lucky am I to have seen it?
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