All tagged memory

We sat close on the lunch table bench and passed the pencil between us, writing quickly into a notebook, filling two columns with our invented words and their translations.

Whenever I visit we mostly sit as familiar strangers and talk about the tea. Once in a while, though, there’s a small window, five minutes max, when her eyes sparkle.

I’m two, maybe three, wearing a baggy diaper and standing in shin-deep puddle water. Leah’s here too, all pigtails and chubby legs and chubby cheeks.

Remember when our dreams were simply slips of paper, scrawled in minutes, torn with careless confidence, and tacked to beams that crossed through darkness overhead in the attic above your room?

I was swinging ever higher on the swing mounted on a sturdy branch of the immeasurably ancient oak. And then I was on the ground …