A. E. W.

I Remember Pasta Cooking

I remember lifting the lid to smell the steam.

I remember my dad growing a wildflower garden until it reached his head and watching him pull all the stems out of the soil. 

I remember sharing a birthday party with my mom and eating a cake with her picture on it.

I remember hearing a fox do our dishes at night.

I remember going with my dad to an Imax film about tall buildings and peeing in the theater seat. 

I remember getting apples in my lunch instead of chocolate Dungaroos.

I remember climbing up a ladder and bending under the branches of a tree and picking its cherries and spitting their seeds on the driveway.

I remember trying to teach my dad how to braid hair on a Hip Hop Barbie.

I remember my mom telling me to eat all my spinach and my dad eating it for me. 

I remember holding my dad's thumb because his hands were too big and hugging his leg because I couldn't reach his waist. 

I remember pretending to be dead in the living room and my dad stepping over me. 

I remember drawing earrings on my stick figures.

I remember taking baths with my mom behind me and my dad behind her. 

I remember asking if we were moving because we needed a bigger bathtub.

I remember my mom and my dad in separate houses and my mom making microwave hotdogs for dinner and lying on my stomach to look through a vent on the floor and seeing a woman opening a refrigerator door. 

I remember being a flower girl and giving away all the flowers in my bouquet. 

I remember telling my step dad that I would call him dad and calling him Dave. 

I remember moving to a place with hills and having a car instead of a station wagon and watching my step dad kiss my mom in the ear.

I remember getting a barrette and accidentally breaking a bead off of it and crying while I kept throwing it against my wall and picking it up again. 

I remember people knocking on my Grammy's door and her barking next to the peep hole.  

I remember my Grammy convincing me that under her vegetable garden, she had buried a spaceship.

I remember my Grammy taking me to walk with horses.

I remember crossing over a stream by stepping on a flat rock that stuck its head out of the water. 

I remember telling my neighbor to pee in a garbage can so I could see his penis.

I remember thinking that pretty women walked on their tippy-toes and squinted their eyes.

I remember tape players and singing with a serious face.

I remember hearing my mom spell a-s-s and running to write it on my desk.

I remember standing on a stool in front of the kitchen counter and dipping eggs into a bowl of pink water. 

I remember making experiments to find out the difference between the rain coming through the tree branches and the rain coming from the clouds.

I remember eating soap in a grocery cart. 

I remember picking at a chicken pock in my ear and getting chicken pox three times.

I remember my neighbor telling me that his penis was a needle.

I remember going to an after-school program and getting a plastic zip-lock bag from the cafeteria and peeing in it and leaving it in the bathroom. 

I remember telling my class that my maid picked out my nail polish.

I remember learning how to read with Hooked-on-Phonics so I could find out about Chicken Little. 

I remember spelling house with a w.

I remember getting little cuts on my skin from washing my hands too much and the hairs from my sweater getting caught in the cuts.

I remember asking Grammy for her tinfoil Wise Men.

I remember being mad at my grandpa because his face was red.

I remember dreaming about a doctor stealing my dog in a wheel barrow.

I remember my neighbor moving away and giving me a plastic sheep before she left.

I remember having pencils that smelled like strawberries.

I remember drawing a picture with white glue and pouring colored sand over the paper and waiting for the glue to dry before shaking the loose sand off and then scooping up the sand that fell and putting it on the glue again.

I remember an old wooden table that had a dark green top with fingernail dents in it and sticky black circles on its surface.

I remember telling my dad's girlfriend that I was a lady because I had "cuticle hairs." 

I remember telling Angela Rodriguez that her teeth looked like rocks so she couldn't sing "I Saw the Sign" in our talent show.

I remember spreading secrets that Laura Cole de Cruz was poor and that her sister didn't have a baby because she killed it.

I remember looking up Khalid Nigh's number in the phone book and rehearsing what I was going to say and hoping that he didn't change his blue hair or act mean to his dad for being a taxi driver. 

I remember falling in love with Daniel Saunders from The Chosen and kissing a boy because he was Jewish and his name was Daniel.

I remember driving with Daniel to a school dance and telling him not to rape me and Daniel asking me to put my seatbelt on.

I remember ignoring the boy I had a crush on and Diana driving me by his house and honking the horn and throwing eggs at his car. 

I remember wearing two bras to get cleavage and going to the bathroom to unhook one of them so I could make out. 

I remember convincing my parents that I needed custom-made moccasins.

I remember putting perfume on my underwear and giving Dan a slice of banana-cream pie and watching him eat it on my porch. 

I remember Dan coming to my house to tell me he couldn't take me to dinner.

I remember hearing a party down the street and watching some guy unzip his pants and pee on my lawn.

I remember living in Denmark and Jesper driving me to Gymnasium in a blue Morgan and sitting in the library instead of going to Naturfag class.

I remember asking Amira if I could go with her to a play and leaving early to walk around in the snow.

I remember sleeping on the plane home and Diana picking me up at the airport and first noticing that she had pimple on her cheek before I hugged her. 

I remember smoking in the grass and watching the sun set next to the cliffs and Travis saying that we didn't need to take pictures and staring at a group of white trees in a canyon and trying to get "Like a Virgin" out of my head.

I remember lying with Claire on a beach with black sand and watching Travis bend down in the water. 

I remember giving Travis a shirt from Goodwill for his birthday and seeing him wear it and wanting to push my nose into his chest to smell him. 

I remember his mom telling me that she wanted me to have the shirt and following her up the stairs to look at his room and seeing the picture I took of a peeled orange slice next to an orange tree taped to his desk and reading cards that I gave him and looking out of his windows and smelling his sheets and pulling out papers stuck between the books in his bookshelf and picking up the tools he kept on the shelves in his closet and wanting to take a hiking knife.