Memories:

1. Biloxi, Mississippi. With my brother and sister. It's hot, even though we're used to hot because we live in southern Illinois. We're chasing pieces of paper around the lawn next to the motel where we're staying. It's very exciting--very exciting. We later discover these are just blank receipts, the type a waitress in a diner/restaurant carries. To me they are special, almost forbidden forms, blowing around the ground. Other memories of the trip, which was special because it was a place we went that wasn't the Adirondacks: ocean water that was the strangest color, blue-green. Bad, bad sunburns. Jelly beans hidden around the motel room for Easter, including in the dial of the telephone. New Orleans, where we went to a cemetery and I slipped on a rotten stump that was hollow in the middle. The hole there seemed to go to the middle of the earth. When my mouth hit the stump my loose tooth came out, fell into the hole and disappeared, a very dramatic moment.

2. Lying in a hospital bed. Incredible pain fills my abdomen. Burning, aching, seething pain. Beyond the stupid scale they use when they ask you how bad your pain is. Waiting for the nurse to come with my morphine. The surgeon has just spent 5 hours cutting away my uterus, what was left of the only ovary and fallopian tube I had left, and scraping away as much of my endometriosis as he could. He had to cut around my bladder and colon and vast amounts of scar tissue from two previous surgeries. The whole thing is hell and I am now incapable of having children. I am 37 years old and alone.

3. Playing in the space next to the house at Rome Avenue with my brother and sister in what we called The Little Bill Village. We built elaborate driveways for our model cars and had little tiny people who sat in the drivers' seats. We used doll house furniture to furnish their "houses." We played among the lilies of the valley plants for what seemed like hours, the three of us. vroom vroom, squatting down, kneeling down. To this day when I drive by houses nestled in the woods with a certain type of driveway I say to myself "Little Bill Village."

4. It's the middle of the night, again at Rome Avenue. Early '60's. I wake up, terrified. I hear loud BOOMs, over and over again. It's totally dark and there are no sounds coming from the house. I run from my bedroom to my parents' bedroom, wake them up. "The Russians are bombing Rockford!" We've been told in school that when the Russians attack the United States, Rockford will be one of the first places they will hit because of its importance as a machine-tool producing center (later I learn that people in Rhode Island were told the same thing, their reason was the naval bases and access to New England. People in Plattsburgh were told IT would be hit because of the Air Force Base.). My father, never sympathetic to the fears of his children says "If the Russians were bombing Rockford you'd be doing more than just hearing them. It's a thunderstorm." I ask if I can get in bed with them. My mother very begrudgingly allows me about 6" of space between herself and the edge of the bed. I can't get back to sleep easily but eventually doze off until the storm subsides, then I go back to my own bed, relieved but not convinced we're safe. At night in Rockford from our front steps I can hear the hum of the factories and see the glow of the city. It is not comforting to me.

5. I am sitting in the cure chair, also called the Saranac chair, on the porch of our new boathouse. It is June and few, if any of the camps on the lake are occupied. Our camp has not yet been opened. It's dusk and the lake is inky dark and still. There are no bugs, there is no sound. It is slightly cool--the perfect temperature. I am wearing a large t-shirt, with bare legs. One of my dogs is lying quietly between my knees sleeping and the other is sleeping against the screen on the floor. I am reading by candlelight: there is no electricity on the porch. I have about 6 candles lit, one on each arm of the chair and the rest on the table next to me. I am the only person in the world. I am completely at peace and totally happy.