I remember everything

I pretty much remember everything from the time I was in diapers until now, with the exception of the seventh grade, which still remains a mystery to me. I mean I remember the cubby cribs in the church nursery and being held on hips and the sing-songy voice of the pastor's sermons and the sound of pantyhose rubbing together on fat church ladies' legs. I remember spinning the squares, circles and triangles on my baby crib at home in the room I shared with my teenage aunt, before she moved out and that room became my brother's and was painted red, white and blue and plastered with Civil War wallpaper.

I remember being pre-verbal, but still thinking to the grown-ups in my life, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You shouldn't say that. That's not very nice." And thinking to myself, "Why doesn't anyone ever ask me what I think?" Of course, no one consults infants and toddlers when making major family decisions, I understand that now, but I often look at babies and silently ask them, “Who are you? What are you thinking?”

I remember the name of every teacher I had in school K-12 and a lot of the students' names, too. I mean, okay, sure I was kid; it's not like I had it all figured out like I do now (cough, gag, wheeze). I remember I asked my mother one day, "How do you spell grannit?" "Grannit? Use it in a sentence," she said. "Well, like, 'You always take me for grannit!'" Imagine what that must have been like for her? Generally, kids just repeat what they hear around the house and this was no exception. "You mean granted," she said. "G-R-A-N-T-E-D. To take someone for granted." "What does it mean?" I asked. What does it mean, when you're in the middle of a marriage that isn't working? And how do you explain that to your second-grader? I remember everything, sure, but not her answer.

I must have been less than five, because I wasn't in school yet, or it could have been summer. Mom and I were up real late. We'd fallen asleep watching TV, but we woke up at midnight when the national anthem was playing and the station turned to loud snow. Before we went upstairs to go to bed, she set a place at the table for Dad's breakfast (he worked nights)--a bowl, a napkin, a spoon, a coffee cup, a box of Wheaties and the sugar bowl. I asked her why she did that and she said because she loved him. I declared I would never do that when I got married. She chuckled and grinned, knowing that I would because she knew that love makes you do sweet things.

When I was six, Dad moved out for a while, not very far away, they said, and we could call him or visit him whenever we wanted to. He had a different telephone number from us and that just didn't seem right. He was about a mile away in a tiny metal trailer that smelled of moth balls and had a gas stove that I was afraid of. It seemed like forever that they were separated, but I've since learned that it was only for six months. This seems hard to believe.

Then Mom had to go to the hospital for five days for something that now might be an outpatient procedure. I remember Dad didn't know anything about how to get us ready in the morning, but he'd been in the military and knew how to follow orders, which Mom must have left. He did his best. My hair was in knots and he used his fine tooth comb on it. I screamed and cried. Mom had laid out five outfits for me to wear. She put them on the dining room table on top of the piles of other laundry that always lived there.

They said when he moved back that things were going to be okay. They were really trying to convince themselves. We knew better. When I was about eight, Dad was picking up my brother and me from our grandparents' house. Even as we were still going down the long driveway toward the road, he said to my much older brother, but not to me, "Remember that time I went to live in the trailer? Well, I'm gonna go live there again, but this time for good. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?" My brother said yeah and then they were both crying quietly. Dad thought he was speaking in code so that I wouldn't understand, so I pretended not to cry.

A few days later, or maybe later that night, I don't remember, Mom and Dad called me into their room, their gold, but not shiny room. They sat on the edge of their bed, facing me. They were very serious. They were more united in this, their final act as Mom and Dad, than I had ever seen them (aside from that night they made supper and taught me the difference between dinner and supper). I thought, "This is ridiculous. How stupid do you think I am?" I broke the tense silence and said, "You're getting divorced." They looked shocked. How did I know? "Duh? (I clucked my tongue and rolled my eyes.) I was in the truck when you told K (my brother)." "You've known since then and you didn't say anything?" I shrugged my shoulders, "You didn't say anything either." I begged them to stay together. I promised to be good. Their hearts broke and they gushed all over themselves to assure me that they weren't getting divorced because of me or my brother. There was nothing I could do to change things. They were definitely sure of their decision, which was final and which, adding insult to injury, they had made without consulting me.