One of Alice’s writing exercises that has brought out great material is the one that starts “I don’t know why I remember . . .”
Today these are the things I don't know why I remember—
Those haunting daguerreotypes, faces suspended in time, names lost.
The evocative bits of fabric that accompanied the foundlings.
The morning my father lifted me on his shoulders up to the level of the glass cat on the highest bookshelf in the dining room, among the sunlit leaves of the hoya. Pure joy when I realized that it was Saturday and we could get up late and be together.
The campanile at Mills. Sitting against the library wall with Melanie listening to it measuring off the hours.
Riding to the school-end picnic at Ghost Ranch in the back of someone’s truck, my hair tangled impossibly by the wind.
The little dimestore turtles in their plastic bowl with plastic island and palm tree that ate lettuce and bits of uncooked hamburger and then nothing, unhappy little creatures, nothing for weeks on end, and then died.
The song I never played for Baccalaureate. The smell of the lilacs that May evening.
My Mom’s chicken with sherry and wild rice. And then the grapes with brown sugar and sour cream. Just for parties.
Granny Belle’s orange pekoe tea.
Uncle Les looking up, smiling, from stringing seed pearls.
Coco Luna sitting cross-legged on her lawn, practicing to be the child Sorrow in that summer’s opera, Madama Butterfly.
Catching minnows at day camp. Quicksilver in cupped hands.
The lovely Emperor Concerto from across the creek furiously interrupted that summer morning at the cottage up at Russian River.
The gray Himalayan cat named T.S. Eliot who sauntered in my open door one day and wouldn’t leave.
Riding the rope swing over the Santa Fe River, this time of year, with hopeless love in the air and the end near.
Words from the Spoon River Anthology. (“You’re haunted, you’re hunted, wherever you roam; Spoon River, Spoon River, is calling you home.”)
The little mouse pin with garnet eyes I found and named Stanley, terrified that someone would claim it and want it back. (At the concert in which Evan Ela sang in The Little Drummer Boy.)
The first two lines of Fum, Fum, Fum.
Drinking root beer on the Fourth of July, and lighting sulfurous black snakes.
Writing our names across the darkness in sparkler light.
The skunks living under the cabin on Bone Lake, where I learned to play pool.
Grandma Tressie drinking all of my peach daiquiri.
The writer who made his living as a private cook.
The woman in New Orleans who told Seth and me about her favorite recipe for asparagus: “You just open the can…”
The starfish my father tried to take home in his suitcase.
The wailing in the rundown pensione on Lake Como in the middle of the night, when I woke, sick, and had to walk down the dark hallway, barefoot, to the shared bathroom with its grimy window opening on a wall of rock.
The luscious glass marbles the Palmer boys kept in an old Folger’s coffee can in their garage.
Somebody playing Albinoni’s Adagio on the organ above us—several centuries—as we crawled in our waterproof archaeology pants through the crypt under the monastery on the St. Bernard Pass.
The flavor of kumquats wrapped in bacon.
Today these are the things I don't know why I remember—
Those haunting daguerreotypes, faces suspended in time, names lost.
The evocative bits of fabric that accompanied the foundlings.
The morning my father lifted me on his shoulders up to the level of the glass cat on the highest bookshelf in the dining room, among the sunlit leaves of the hoya. Pure joy when I realized that it was Saturday and we could get up late and be together.
The campanile at Mills. Sitting against the library wall with Melanie listening to it measuring off the hours.
Riding to the school-end picnic at Ghost Ranch in the back of someone’s truck, my hair tangled impossibly by the wind.
The little dimestore turtles in their plastic bowl with plastic island and palm tree that ate lettuce and bits of uncooked hamburger and then nothing, unhappy little creatures, nothing for weeks on end, and then died.
The song I never played for Baccalaureate. The smell of the lilacs that May evening.
My Mom’s chicken with sherry and wild rice. And then the grapes with brown sugar and sour cream. Just for parties.
Granny Belle’s orange pekoe tea.
Uncle Les looking up, smiling, from stringing seed pearls.
Coco Luna sitting cross-legged on her lawn, practicing to be the child Sorrow in that summer’s opera, Madama Butterfly.
Catching minnows at day camp. Quicksilver in cupped hands.
The lovely Emperor Concerto from across the creek furiously interrupted that summer morning at the cottage up at Russian River.
The gray Himalayan cat named T.S. Eliot who sauntered in my open door one day and wouldn’t leave.
Riding the rope swing over the Santa Fe River, this time of year, with hopeless love in the air and the end near.
Words from the Spoon River Anthology. (“You’re haunted, you’re hunted, wherever you roam; Spoon River, Spoon River, is calling you home.”)
The little mouse pin with garnet eyes I found and named Stanley, terrified that someone would claim it and want it back. (At the concert in which Evan Ela sang in The Little Drummer Boy.)
The first two lines of Fum, Fum, Fum.
Drinking root beer on the Fourth of July, and lighting sulfurous black snakes.
Writing our names across the darkness in sparkler light.
The skunks living under the cabin on Bone Lake, where I learned to play pool.
Grandma Tressie drinking all of my peach daiquiri.
The writer who made his living as a private cook.
The woman in New Orleans who told Seth and me about her favorite recipe for asparagus: “You just open the can…”
The starfish my father tried to take home in his suitcase.
The wailing in the rundown pensione on Lake Como in the middle of the night, when I woke, sick, and had to walk down the dark hallway, barefoot, to the shared bathroom with its grimy window opening on a wall of rock.
The luscious glass marbles the Palmer boys kept in an old Folger’s coffee can in their garage.
Somebody playing Albinoni’s Adagio on the organ above us—several centuries—as we crawled in our waterproof archaeology pants through the crypt under the monastery on the St. Bernard Pass.
The flavor of kumquats wrapped in bacon.
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