I remember snow banks tunneled into forts against the Great Winter Enemy:the boy next door.

I remember being lifted up to be shown the empty crib, a quietness where the baby used to be.

I remember my grandmother’s aproned lap, soft home of fairy tales and stories read aloud.

I remember riding in the truck on the milk route with my uncle, the empty bottles rattling against each other and their wire cages, chattering about the homes they had just left, telling those stories to be held for their new adventures in the next homes where they would be delivered.

I remember taking sandwiches to white-helmeted men standing watch for the raging forest fires that were choking up our skies as we held our breath and crossed our fingers that they would pass us by.

I remember crouching under our desks at school, hands over our heads, practicing for the Evil Day when the Red Menace would Bomb us to Oblivion. We, even in our youth, couldn’t understand how those desks would protect us.

I remember getting the first polio shots, a newly made vaccine, lined up in the school corridor with others waiting nervously for our turn to be stuck and recalling stories of those we knew who had been struck and crippled, and yet we were still a bit afraid of that needle in our arms.

I remember when I learned that my 7th grade classmate had hung himself in his bedroom, I remember when I learned that my friend’s father had hung himself in the barn, and I remember when I learned that my mother-in-law had shot herself in her car, and I remember when my student shot himself with a rifle, and I remember when a dear friend jumped off the top of the Atwater Parking garage, and how I mourned them each and all in the agony of my distress and not-understanding.

I remember running naked from the car in the crisp air of the western desert night to plunge into the steaming hot spring and to float, body warm, face cold, looking at the bits of glistening stars in the black sky.

I remember making a story of high-power towers being aliens moving slowly across our North American continent, at a pace we could not see with our human eyes, but knowing that sometime, sometime, the Wire Aliens would be our Masters.

I remember falling down the dark opening at the inn in Dailekh after two long days of trekking, and wondering if I were dead.

I remember the young Polish musician on the train to Łodz urging me to run away with him and join his circus.

Too many more memories for my 74 years…the rest will have to wait for the next poem, and the poem after that, and the poems that follow those.

Bev Hartford