The New Year 2010

Visiting friends in Watsonville, CA. The sky is darkening, shades of orange and gray streaming across the sky. 2010(found out it’s pronounced twenty-ten from the grammar police). Their dog, Sparky, and my husband are going out to the deck to sit among the redwoods and just gaze at the open space. Sparky keeps wanting everyone to throw his saliva-infested ball back and forth, again and again, a happy myth of Sisyphus.

My daughter, Laura, was ice-skating last night in Yosemite Valley. I imagined her gliding across the ice, El Capitan framing her circular dance. She’ll live there for four months(an Americorps job)—live with the winter chill. My sister, Anne, and niece, Lily, swim in the Caribbean sea, buoyed by salt water. The earth still holds us up—whether water or ice.

As a child, I loved to ice skate. I remembered my parents lifting me between them on the ice. I was probably only three and I flew in the air. Summers we swam on Long Island, and I tasted salt on my lips.

Even after the accident that burned my parents, the world continued and continues to spew out happy memories. Even though the book I wrote is about childhood trauma, a searing, devastating trauma, I remember ice skating, swimming, Sparky approaching me with his wet ball, eyes pleading for me to throw his ball and I do. Small glimpses of happiness as the sky darkens.