I’m sorry I forgot your name and who you were

Your voice sounded different

The desert has hardened and softened me. I can’t remember anyone’s name but I’m having the time of my life!!!!!!

I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing and waking up at five or six and if I go out to dinner or stay up late I’ll sleep until 7:30 but not a minute later.

We have mint, rosemary, and Spanish lavender and I know the lavender is bad for the cats but so far nothing has happened and I plan to replant it somewhere else. What did happen is that I saw a coyote at 5:51am and made all the cats go inside even though he was far and even though we’re up high.

Mateo asks for stories about cowboys and pirates and I mix bits from Home on the Range and 1883 and Peter Pan. For the first time in my life, I’m not at sea level and I love it.

The kitchen is always clean because I’m always cleaning it. The floor is clean because you sweep it. I love the wooden chairs you brought home unexpectedly. And the way the sunlight filters through the pergola and the wind moves across the terrace. Our building sits perpendicular to the sunrise and sunset protecting us from the blazing summer sun.

The summers I’ve learned to dread for the past three years by the beach are over. There is something new and old about this summer, and there is something about a summer on the west coast in the mountains.

My father was the first person to show me California — Los Angeles, Laguna Niguel, and then fifteen years later and not long ago when we met in San Francisco and drove to Napa Valley. I found a book in the house at the top of the mountain in St. Helena about the early days of the valley and I wore these pajamas and read it on the terrace.

The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet

Last week, when I got back, Marcello gave me the book he’d picked up in Edmonds after I had to leave Seattle early. He asked the woman for the best lore of the area and came home with a 1961 memoir about a mother and her children who spent their summers living on a boat exploring the coastal waters of the pacific northwest in the 1920s and 30s. It’s the 50th year anniversary edition and the introduction by the original Canadian publisher and close friend of the author gave me goosebumps.

Two weeks have passed. Two Sundays ago I was in Miami and we were about to watch The Birdcage (!) and cold stone was on the way and it hadn’t happened yet. We hadn’t watched a movie all together since Napa, Bottle Shock (so good).

At the wine shop there are always one or two bottles of my favorite cab from San Miguel de Allende left and I always take them home. I drank Pinot Noir by the glass and I lost at chess and you won and when we got home I kept staring at myself in the mirror and I felt much older than I looked.

I keep telling people we’re going to invite them over for dinner. In the past week I have called a mother at Mateo’s school by the wrong name and had a run in with someone I couldn’t name but have known now, for years. I got in the car and told Marcello I think I ran into someone we know but could it also be that we met at some point another family that looks just like this one? His voice was so different.

At the graduation a beautiful woman came up to me and said do you remember me and I said yes and she said did you move and I said no and then yes and I looked down at her belly and said congratulations and it didn’t occur to me until the second she was walking away that I went to tour her house about a year ago. She was moving for more space, to try for another baby.

Like the bitch at the party that says so nice to meet you to people she knows she’s met before. I now say good to see you so if that doesn’t apply because we’ve never met, that’s also happening and I’m sorry.

There are files taking up the space where I could have kept you. I think my subconscious is trying to be less of a hoarder. Memories, parts of lots, and I play them on repeat like the shows that I watch and the music that I listen to.

Like the night we met and then the next, the first date at Lagniappe and how I moved to New York five days later. How on his first day of school he crawled onto the desks in front of everyone and roared.

I remember everything about being in the hospital, both times, and I remember perfectly the day we came home with Mateo and how it was raining and we didn’t speak in the car because we were so scared and he was so little. I think that was the best day of my life.

So at any given moment during office hours, unbeknownst to my small surf town, I am very busy. Documentation as preservation. I’m reorganizing the files and winning the arguments and making lists, so many lists all the time while I drive around and get down and do commerce and participate minimally and get back in the car. I’m editing the material sitting on my laptop at home while I drive, and planning dinner, and forgetting milk.

And I want to remember everything, this, when I’m 96 sitting on the terrace near some sea, maybe in some mountain. And for when I’m 96 reading this in print, I want to remember that I’m on the terrace and it’s July and windy. When Marcello and Maalem get back we’ll go in the pool. And as I type this Mateo is three years old and sitting on top of me with my laptop on his lap and yesterday he graduated from kinder uno.

His first last day of school was celebrated beneath the full moon on a tiny stage framed by rows and rows of mango trees and after, at home, with blueberry juice in a champagne flute.

His teachers are the first women I hand my son off to, the only women, besides the ones in my family. They know this and they adore my son and we hug and cry at the end because we’ve shared something sacred.

I’m bonded to them and to this little group of tiny humans that somehow ended up going to preschool together in La Baja, the absolute southernmost tip of California. So I don’t mind that I’m trying to keep my eyes on his blue jeans and in doing so make a fool of myself for saying the wrong thing or not remembering. I’m invested in his world, his first real introduction to society. So I’ll sacrifice how I’m perceived, because it doesn’t really matter.

The morning after feels like the morning after a concert or the Christmas bazar or field day. Mel asked if I was ok and I said no and then yes. I watch the footage all weekend, beaming. I can’t believe I have a lifetime left of these firsts. I didn’t think it would feel this good. This time I’ll remember it all. I will remember that he channeled dinosaurs for courage again and how I kept saying over and over and over they’re so little.

In many ways I am everything I wished I could be, and in some I am what I never hoped to be. I’m no longer scared of the things that I used to be scared of, but now there are new things to fear even though many of them are only in my phone. It helps to consume old Winnie the Pooh and old SpongeBob episodes and at night I look up commercials from twenty years ago. When I delete Instagram I can turn back time so I do now and then, but especially in the summer.

I like trying things and changing my mind. I started something new today, and this time I’m going to finish because I made a very important promise and I’m fine with it taking a long time. I like having the candle lit and the cold coffee next it because I love the smell of both.

And I didn’t like it when you insisted because it had to do with my son and something was off and why did your voice change so much I remember it deeper. I told Mel years ago about the off feeling and maybe that’s why I deleted your face. And maybe you didn’t deserve that but maybe you did and what I do know is that I don’t need to question my gut for your feelings.