Talking to you…3/21/22

PARTS AND PIECES

Gift

Here comes the red Dodge again. Parking itself in my memories. It was a snowy day, and probably icy too. The neighborhood where our street address had a nice ring to it, 802 Park Lane. One, of two houses I remember the full street address. Same neighborhood as the baby bird, and where I caught my little brother picking his nose and eating it while riding his bike. Oh, and the tree I climbed with wild hair in the front yard right outside my bedroom window. But I’ve told you all of those stories. This memory was partly given to me as a gift from the future. You’ll see what I mean…hang on.

My mom had my brother and I in her red Dodge, I wish I remembered where we were going. My favorite places she took us were a contemporary art store that had a wall full of sticker rolls hanging by chains and always smelled of croissants, a garden center where I’d hide in the greenhouses of plants, and a yarn barn. Unfortunately, this trip’s destination escapes me. What I do remember is not too long after we started out we were sliding and slamming into something. I think it must have been a parked car, the memory folds up there. Thirty some odd years later I learned that was my moms last drive, or at least that’s how my uncle remembers it. There’s the gift, somehow given inside a conversation without an inkling it was given. Stories hold hidden treasures, keep on telling them…