I have a terrible memory. Mostly, I remember moments, strung together in no particular order:

My sister and I, in the bathroom of grandma and grandpa’s Sullivan’s mobile home, getting ready in the morning, listening to Suzanne Vega from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack… I always associated that soundtrack with my sister, and she swears she never listened to it. But that’s the way my memory works, no extended knowledge of anything, just momentary associations.

The smell of the laundry room at Grandma and Grandpa Heiskell’s. Grandpa’s shed…going out to get our fishing poles… the time that I fell face first into the cold creek after showing off my rock hopping skills…

My mom rocking me, and the songs she’d make up just for me. The creak of the chair and the perfect fit of my head on her chest.

My dad when he surprised me one Thanksgiving by coming home after having been away for a month… the smell of his trenchcoat when he picked me up.

Hiding in the basement during a tornado warning. Illinois. I was making an oven mit out of colorful elastic and we had to move downstairs.

Riding in Grandpa’s big buick car, watching the corn fields go by. The smell of the tracker at their farm.

My grandmother’s touch on my back. My grandfather’s hand… the veins and the spots.

The color of a ceiling. The smell of a perfume. The feeling of the bark of a tree that I used to sit in, my private canopy.

Ask me to tell you a story of an important event in my life, and I can’t put the moments together well enough. I can’t find a shape, a context. It’s like I was there just moving through, just watching and feeling, but not letting the story in.

Long after my grandparents were gone, I went back to my grandpa’s shed. So much I had forgotten, almost as if I hadn’t ever been there. But then I found an old chalk board, with scribbling still on it. I looked closer and the scribble was my name.

I spent a lot of my childhood in Arizona. I remember riding in a car through the desert, I’d always watch myself out the window, following along the side of the road on horse back, over the rocky hills. Every time I was in the car. Watching as I galloped along, happily unkempt. I could smell the dirt, hear the hooves hitting the rocks, feel the warm wind. I knew that I was meant to live in a different time. I wanted to jump out of the car and run into that time and taste the salty sweat on my face, imagining that I was walking in strong boots with an intimate connection to the earth.

Behind my school lay a vast desert playground. I would take long walks alone, building forts out of large rocks in the shade of ocotillo trees. I had pet rocks and imaginary friends.

My grandma Imogene was quiet. But her laugh would fill the corners of the ceiling and travel all the way into your heart. Her hands were soft and joints apparent, veins blue, and her rings would clink slightly while she scratched my back at night, sitting on the side of the twin bed with brown sheets. The home they lived in had lots of brown, brown plastic walls, brown grey green fuzzy carpeting, brown sand outside.

My grandpa George was tall and brown. Dark brown hair and eyes and hands with which he’d gently pat my back or leg. He was kindness personified. Evenness. When my grandma would panic about missing her purse, when she forgot my name, his name, he was evenness. He would point out the beauty of the day, of the mountain across Verde Valley, of the sunset, of the creek where we’d fish, of the quiet. It is from him that I learned to listen.

My grandpa had a friend named Dave. Dave lived down a winding dirt road, tall with cottonwood trees. His cabin was one room with a twin bed, a wood burning stove, a newspaper and a book or two. Clippings on the wall, horseshoes, bit pieces, leather straps from saddles. He must have had a fridge and sink, but I honestly don’t remember ever seeing them. I loved it there. We’d hike down to the stables to visit his horses—down a hill where he’d hung a rope to aid the climb. The last time I saw Dave he was still in his cabin, nearly 90 years old. He cried over my grandfather’s death. I sat on his bed. I sat in a rocking chair on his porch. Felt my grandpa there. Listened. I heard the creek.