“Sitting in a high chair, big chair, my chair, sittin’ in a high chair, bang my spoon!
-Hap Palmer, “Sittin’ in a High Chair”
“She always comes back, she never would forget me…”
-Hap Palmer, “My Mommy Comes Back”
This week I’ve been showing my beloved Maria José some of the places where I grew up.
The path outside my dad’s house, grassy now and scattered with dry pine needles, but deep with snow midwinter when I’m 9, stepping outside to help him shovel.
The pier at the lake where we jumped in, the cool dark breaking open to hold us.
The beach where, at 16, I built a warm, dry little driftwood house with my best friend.
The pool where my mom held me in the water, and later I learned to swim, somewhere back before my memory of years and ages.
The hills where I watched tadpoles and frogs, always unsure how one becomes the other, already waist deep in the wonder of mud and algae.
Tonight, inside after these places, we listened to songs I remember from before I remember. I’m struck by how lush and joyous such childhood tastes of the world could be. Worlds so full of flavor. I sit with how scary, how sad, these tastes could be. I was a kid sometimes so lost. And grounding. A little more than a year after our wedding, it’s a delight to be sharing these children we were, these delights and uncertainties we’re rooted in, these places we grow.
Azlan Guttenberg Smith 