I remember reading Writing Down the Bones in the back of our minivan without seats surrounded by all my possessions inside suitcases but mostly big black garbage bags and bawling when Kaylie finally called; I missed her extra, and plus, at the beginning of every semester I feel like my life is falling apart.
These things I say I thrive on, like change and leaving and stuff, there's a reason why people hate them.
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I remember sitting in the interview with Dr. B and Miss Applonie turquoise glasses woman. I remember waiting outside the room for a lifetime and a few minutes, with the girl with the orangey fleshly nylons. Pink power suit, too. Did she get in, I wonder?
The office was small--keyboard, pictures everywhere, a desk. This is where some other music dude spends most of his life, and here some of the most defining moments of my life thus far have taken place. And I don't need to say I remember; forgetting is improbable.
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I remember the movie "The Blind Side." I remember applesauce and seeing Katie in a sports bra, watching her wave a spoon around as she ate yogurt after a run. I remember runs along the Provo river trail and the one time I floated down the Provo river with Trevor Witham. I remember when and why I got my iPod and a time when I listened to each song on it. I remember typing for hours and walking through hallways and looking at books at Barnes and Noble and wondering what coffee tastes like. I remember Mista EEEn, his spirit and wishing I was magically in love with him and then the point when I realized I didn't want that at all.
I remember wanting a red coat. I remember getting my first pair of round, light tan glasses. I remember jeans and worries about being fat and haircuts to my chin, mistakes I made over and over again. I remember birthday cards and feeling bad for throwing them away. I remember a Saturday closet-cleanout, bawling because I had to unclutter my junk that somehow meant so much to me. I remember making lists of wacky colors and emailing them to my cousin. I remember pain.
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I remember Celine Dion. Listening when no one else was the right person to talk to. Back when cd players were it and I had a floral bedspread. I was trying to figure out what my life was and tackling big questions already, nine or ten years old. I was lying on the floral bedspread at the time when everything in my room got washed gold by the drooping sun. It would get lazier; the room would get brassier, and Celine Dion sang loud in my ears.
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I remember Mrs. Amatangelo, who had fake-dyed mousey brown hair that looked like a horse hair wig and enormous glasses. She wore frumpy teacher dresses to look the part; she put me on time out. I've always very sincerely believed that she permanently damaged me because I was such an impressionable kindergartner.
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Summer meant delicious food: fruit, and gourmet salads! My mother was always an expert at salad making. It took me years to realize I was allowed to and wanted to take two or three hefty tong-fulls. The gold time was salad time sometimes, as well as Celine time. We'd sit around the same table we have now, and shut the blinds--I always wanted to keep them open. Yes, I remember SALAD.
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Rain holds a lot for me. The rain was falling hard and collecting in little pools in Lakeland Hills park. Who was I with? A blonde girl. We weren't very good friends. But we splashed in the collections of sky water and felt on top of the world...
until our socks got soaked. But we, or I, rather, still puddle stomped when the rain fell other times. Like times of confessions, barefoot. Times of summer's steamy rainfalls and times of wintery chilly pools, barefoot and no. Rain holds a lot for everyone, I think.
