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First Memory

Feeling safe in a father’s arms, sighting a lost yo-yo in the lake, being on Mars

What It’s Like

It’s like being in Miss Wheeler’s class but wanting to play with the kids in Miss King’s class. The thing is, they go to recess at 10:30 with the fifth graders, while your class goes at 11 with the kindergarteners.

Celebrations

An old man and a butterfly, a beloved friend’s housewarming, a hysterectomy

Sunbeams

To stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going down on one’s knees and thanking him.

Søren Kierkegaard

Ruminations

Memory is housed safely in its skull studio, where it can play, replay, edit, splice, erase, make louder or softer anything not in this room. Memory is here to paint the room when I least notice it happening.

The Wizard

I knew old Wiggins years before he scandalized the area newspapers, because he was part of my childhood, like the pine tree with the tire swing and the forbidden, ancient barn I explored in secret.

Commentaries

When they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered: “An explorer!” It was quite the thing for a boy of ten, but imagine being stuck with it. Fashions change but one thing does not: all adults want little boys to be something else besides little boys.

The Short And Happy Life Of Spaghetti Johnson

He knew understanding was coming to him, like the answer to a riddle which has broken its anchor line in the unconscious and is floating up toward consciousness, becoming more illuminated by the light of consciousness.

He Said If She Touched Him He’d Die

Sunday Mornings

A cloud of golden light, a half-gallon of ice cream, the Book Barn