This post started when I lost my wallet.

I’ve been using my birth certificate as an ID, which reminds me that I was born here:


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My Brother says: “In a room on the second floor on the south side, I think west of the stairs.”

My memory starts on the island we moved to after leaving LA, at the Henry’s: scattered images of a grandfather clock and dinosaurs, as well as dad or mom accidentally tossing into a bonfire a container with remnants of some gasoline in it. It exploded, sending out an a-bomb style shockwave of heat and awesome and a 8-14’ mushroom cloud of flame.

Then we moved to Middelstatt’s, on the edge of the island. There it was cold. We faced the ocean, I have more memories of here. Two that stand out:

  • Staying up late, two brothers watching their mother play Tetris. Sometime in winter I perched my head by the window sill and watched the corner of a pane of glass, where the weather had arranged not only for snow, but for a special relationship of friction, temperature and wind, so that a little game of slowly melting snow Tetris was playing for several hours.
  • Lying in golden fields of wheat in the summer warmth with a cool sea-breeze and an apple in hand, watching cumulus clouds and imagining being in them. I associate blue with happiness, and I think this is why. This is my happiest memory.

Then my sister was born, and we moved back into the middle of the island.

I recently remembered a bet that my brother and I had made—when I was probably about 8, so he would be 9 1/2—while having a conversation about memory. The winner would be the person who remembered a certain word the next day. The first to say it, would win. To his surprise and my glee, the next day I was the first to say “Bat”. He’s forgotten that.

Around that time, I remember my sister insisting that she was a baby elephant—”Bellephant”—for around a week, having tantrums if someone suggested she wasn’t.

A few years later, she had a pet dead bat.