Recollection

I’m not sure if it was the long drive through the open fields of green wheat rows, rolling hills, and waves of starlings flying over the road -- or if it was a normal afternoon’s desperation, but there it was: as we pulled into town, the long shadows met us, and I knew I would be restless until sundown.

You came home afterward. Remember -- the joy in your voice and the laughter that lifted up behind us as we rode the tandem bike, that child-laughter? The air was so cold that I pulled my sweatshirt hood up over my ears, and our fingers felt brittle on the handlebars. I imagined that your fit of happiness that day was as spontaneous as in your childhood -- all those times when the snow floated down, and you lifted your head to catch it on your tongue.

It’s as though I had a glimpse of you then: a recollection of a memory I’ve never had.

And later, when the impressions of the rest of the day came trickling back to me, small footsteps quickened my pulse and stole my restless urges for a moment.

Our youngest and I draped a quilt over our heads, and the squares, windmills of flowers and triangles, cast reds and blues on our faces. The two of us listened to a pair of dice thudding on a playing board. He smiled, a chocolate smear on his cheek, jabbering about a game of nothing.

Coffee steam rose that morning, early for a Saturday, in a dance of air and heat. And that night, late because Saturdays grew late quickly, boy-feet ran and slid over slick tiles, the pad-pad-pad twirling with that same child-laughter that followed us down the block while we pedaled.

That day passed with deep sighs of a long departure, and yet, it now seems brief: a flap of a tiny wing.

I wrote this to you so we might both make the day’s acquaintance again, all the while the same desperation from the afternoon reminding me it will be back. The images will change and waft the listlessness away again, only to return -- and like a wave of the hand before the face I’ll try to brush it away.

But there it is: an unmistakable glimpse of my future recollections, all of them rushing up to greet me despite my attempts to ward them off -- rows of echoing halls, nights of rolling half-sleep, and waves of bare afternoons.