Some Things I'll Never Forget Are...

ZOE BORKOWSKI

Some Things I Will Never Forget Are…

… the smell of newly-plowed fields and making a nest of clods of soil in a furrow and sitting hidden with the damp earth around me, watching my miniature box kite nod at me from the sky and answer my questions with a dip, a rise, a slip to the side. The clouds and blue and seagulls and the dangerous telephone lines at the end of the field at East 14th Street across from the Chevrolet plant and again the fresh smell of soil all around me, and Mother calling.

… the touch of Doris in my sleeping bag, my first infatuation at camp, the pine trees and Mountain Misery surrounded us, it’s a plant so many said stinks but we campers loved the fragrance and included it in letters to friends at home. The sky filled with bright white stars.

… the view of the bay from the Berkeley hills as the light of the approaching day seemed to engulf me and bring awe, a knowledge that this love in my arms would be forever.

… Mother’s clear blue eyes cast upward at the surgeon the day before her brain tumor operation. She has just said in a dramatic voice, “After all, it’s you I trust, doctor.” And she held a long, pregnant pause. The silence surrounded me in my embarrassment.

… the sky in Santa Barbara, cumulous clouds in full reaching billows creating a softness even as they threatened rain. Deep grey to white to a coral-rose color that lit a fire in my heart and the joy that Audrey who I adored, but who was not yet my love, was excited, too, and she took shot after shot after shot and fussed that her camera settings were not right and was the damn battery okay?

… and after burning our eyes through Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and the northern United States, searching every forest and marsh for a moose, we came upon that area between Yellowstone and the Grand Teton that is not Park-supervised and saw a moose and got out of the car and stood at the edge of the road and stared in wonder as her head dipped into the marsh and came out with her mouth filled with weeds and looked about her as she chewed and chewed and then a white Jeep raced up and a father and son raced out, the boy dropped on one knee and shot the moose and she staggered and fell and the father said, “You got him!” and we yelled, “Murderers, killers, murderers!” and were bereft for days.

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