Imaginary Landscape

My father has nine siblings. I say “has,” even though a few have passed away, including my father, because one’s siblings are always one’s siblings. Remembering their birth order was always impossible for me. When I grew up, I just had to keep track of one sibling. Not too long after my father (Herb -- #3) passed away, I asked my Aunt Doris (#9 – the oldest of twins) for their birth order and I wrote it down on a sticky note and have been using it as a bookmark, so I can see it all the time. They are: Bob, Mary, Herb, Curt, Dick, Pat (Patricia), Nancy, Bill, Donna and Doris. There is unbelievable family resemblance among them, although even the twins aren’t identical. I took my sons to a family reunion when they were in grade school, and the youngest came up to me after about an hour and whispered incredulously, “They all look alike!” It certainly wasn’t a trait he and his brother shared, nor my sister and I. Uncle Bob (#1) passed away when I was young; his was the second funeral I att...

It is one of those memories that sticks in one's mind, a snapshot of a brief moment in time, meaningless in its triviality, yet it hangs about like a stranger who looks slightly suspicious, a tiny bit menacing, but who also never does anything to support those fears or allay them. So this morning, in the depths of one of my ‘episodes’, after a night of restless sleeping, it pops into consciousness once again, leaving both an unsecured longing and a spark of joy. When we were children, under the age where one could leave us safely at home, we always went shopping with Mommy. She did not drive, never drove in my recollection, except that one fateful evening when she propelled the neighbour’s car up our driveway, into my father’s Buick, our garage and any number of framed Kaiser shade window screens, leaning against the walls so their framing’s new coat of paint could dry. Oddly enough, I do not recall taking the bus to town, nor returning home on it; I recall only waiting for it af...