Thanks, Baylor

Today, I am thinking about the sights, sounds, smells, and details that remind me of certain times in my life; this, due to in large (all) part to Baylor, who wrote a lovely post about this subject on her site.

1. My breakup with my first love, when I was nineteen. The breakup that led me home, so I could rely on my parents to apply the peroxide and bandages to my slivered heart. Holing up in my childhood bedroom, the lights off, listening to The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter," over and over again.

One late October afternoon, as I drove down our rutted dirt road to my job at the video store, I looked to the left and saw a clump of trees, the woods beside my parents' house. And I saw, among that forest, a tree that I used to climb. Its branches were twisted and its trunk grew wide and thin at varying heights, but it stood, stretching upward, awkward without its thick covering of leaves. And I thought: that tree was there when I was three, and it was there when I was nine, and it's there right now, even though I feel like someone is pressing down on my shoulders, and it will be there, ten year from now, and so will I.

That consistency, that optimistic certainty, was reassuring. And so will I. Knowing that that tree had lived in those woods when I had been happy. Knowing that it was there, now, when I was heartbroken. Knowing that it would, most likely, be there years from now, whatever time would bring, consoled me. Stationary predictability. I could count on that tree.

Fifteen years later, my children play in my parent's yard when we visit. That tree stands, cross armed, in the background. It is taller than it was, though still skinny, still gnarled. If I tromp across the leaves and twigs that carpet the forest and touch it's branches, they feel the same as they did when I was ten-smooth, then puckered. Damp but solid.

I like to think that maybe my children will climb that tree one day.

2. The warm, sugary smell of the donut shop, where I worked in high school. The aroma of coffee and the stained plastic mugs that the regulars thrust at us. "Rinse 'er out," they'd say, then dig into their pockets for the change to pay. I remember J, my friend, saying one morning at 6am, as we both stood behind the counter, waiting for the Saturday crowd to advance, "We are horses. We can sleep standing up," and then, she whinied. And I laughed. The radio played "I Think We're Alone Now," as the baker sprinkled flour across his workspace, then rolled out the sticky dough.

3. My classroom at the newly built school where I transferred to, smelled like plastic and air conditioning vents. It had filing cabinets and a wall of shelves. It had a clean carpeted floor that, through the course of the year, became speckled with glitter (the kind that is impossible to adequately vacuum up). I remember the rubber smell of one little's girl's wheel chair, the high pitched tinkling laughter of another child. I remember the rounded point of my pencil, rough against the pages of my plan book, as I scribbled down ideas. I remember bolting to the bathroom down the hall, newly pregnant, creating an art form out of my struggle to vomit cleanly into the toilet without splashing my clothes. I remember putting all of the details together and missing my old classroom, at the old school, with its cockroach army and scuffed cupboards and waterlogged ceiling tiles. I remember thinking that I didn't deserve the newness of the new school, or a job easier than my old one.

4. The silence of 9/11, standing on my front porch and surveying our street, usually so busy. Looking at the row of houses with their windows lit up, the dancing blue glow of televisions. My two month old baby slept inside, and I looked back inside, at him, then out to the street again. And I realized what made that mild evening so quiet. That the sky was empty, except for the stars. There were no planes rumbling their prescence like the stomach of a hungry man. No blips of light and sound in the night. The silence was suffocating.

5. The photo of the trout in our booth at McCormick and Schmick's the night Lou and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. The shadows that created the fish's rounded underbelly, the colors that became his silvery, translucent gills. Thinking, "I like this fish. I'd like to be his friend," as Lou's fork scraped the last bite of raspberry cheesecake off of his plate. Expensive wood. The mother with her three, grown-up children, reveling in their company. The taste of the salsa, a surprise, because it was mango instead of tomato.

They are not always the big moments. They are glimmers. They are jolts. They are the pictures in a yearbook that remind me of French IV, a stone fireplace that puts me back at Camp Fitch. It is the MC Hammer song that I played on my walkman on the way to Niagara Falls with my family as I nursed my first hangover. It is "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," in the basement of the Theta Chi house. It is the magical moments after midnight, feeling joyous in front of the lights of the Christmas tree but feeling like crying, feeling greedy, knowing that this moment, too, will pass.

It is the watching of children as they dip their toes into a soapy bathtub. It is a boy's freshly shaved face as he walks toward the podium to collect his diploma. It is the hug that comes easily, right now and it is the hug, years later, that is no longer taken for granted.