Places, Part One.

Salem, Oregon.
Tiny apartment. Two year old running up and down the hallway after her bath. Mother with second baby in her belly. Tawny dog named after a Montana town. Nearby there is an ocean, and a beach cabin with dirty windows and a hand on the sill. There are sand dollars, none of them pure, lined in a long wooden boat on the ledge inside the stairwell. In this cabin, they recall, they took the best nap of their lives. This is what they remember clearly: rest.

Helena, Montana. House on Breckenridge. 
That I do not remember. The stories: the time the basement flooded, water over earth four feet deep, and the girl peering down at its depth. The Halloween that was twenty below zero, but the girl, then five, dressed in costume and snowsuit and took our father's hand for one block of trick-or-treating. "After three houses, she was done," our father recalls, still. We imagine him how we cannot remember him: slim and black-haired; heavily bearded. Our mother married a handsome man. They fell quickly.

Helena, Montana. House on Winne. 
Enter: Sally. Blonde haired and blue eyed, grey eyed, our father's eyes. In this house, before the remodel, the basement rooms were cement and filtered light. Were dark corners and uncovered wooden beams, bones. A white mouse named Mary is kept in a cage next to the washing machine. In winter months, on the braided rug that tries to warm the space, we play with our rabbits--feeding them bits of turnip and celery and always fearing them, just a little--their hard teeth and strangely silent faces. We were brought up as timid children, a product of greatest love. Too much shelter.

Missoula, Montana. Apartment. 
In this place, I live alone. There is a small black cat and an anxious orange dog for company. The water heater is finicky and the shower too small--I wish to be three inches shorter, again. I make do. This apartment leaks heat in the winter like a cracked cup, but there is always light in any season. My father--no longer a black-haired, bearded man, though no less loving--he calls this place 'the garret.' It is not a garret in the true sense--no attic eaves or dirty windows overlooking a mad city. It is still a space tucked away and tiny, and I understand that in his unspoken way, my father is envious of this part of my life--the utter autonomy I have. His advice to me has always been two-fold: find a desk and a hard-backed chair and do your work well. Afterwards, he says, 'stuff yourself'--with everything your town, your youth, has to offer you. As a young man, before marriage, my father went traveling. In school he discovered politics. He discovered history and law and what it meant to really talk with his fellows--to debate, argue, consider, while drinking beer. Then he met my mother and his life was stuffed with other stuff. Love. A two year old running down a hallway. A woman with a growing belly. An ocean and a dead-limbed nap; everyone sleeping, even the babies. Flooded basements and white mice. Turnips for rabbits. A child. Two. A third. A little girl who still wanted to trick-or-treat with him in below zero weather in her costume and snowsuit. One block was all she needed, he still remembers. Then she was done.



Thanks for reading.

Beth