Moving Memories
I often wonder if I remember any part of my childhood correctly. I see scenes in my head sometimes, usually triggered by a place or a smell—small scenes, like the leftovers on the cutting room floor at the end of a day of editing. They’re so insignificant I can’t be sure they’re real. Are they just old photographs moving in my memory like an old flipbook? In the scene I recall most often I am three or four years old, and I’m lying in a tent. The tent is orange and the heat of the sun is oozing in through the shiny fabric and warming my skin. I’m sticky with sweat, but not uncomfortably so. I have an arm across my eyes and my legs are splayed in different directions- one crooked over the leg of my sister. The hair that has escaped her tight ponytails is plastered to the back of her neck. I wake slowly. I yawn and gulp in the warm, thick air—half awake, half asleep—that happy in between. In the memory I am sure we are at the park across the street from my grandmother’s house. I can smell the magnolia trees and hear the laughter and conversation of my parents, aunts and uncles. It’s one of the happiest memories I have and I can’t tell for sure if it’s even mine.