Memory

 

May 30, 2022

 Greetings from the cenotaphs,

 Mom gets the little box out of the top drawer, the drawer we never are supposed to look in but me and Elliot look in there when she is at work, and Mrs. Guerra is watching us, but mostly she watches her stories.  So we look in there.

 Elliot is only three and I am five so I remember better.  When we went to the summertarry last year Mom had to push Elliot in the folding stroller, and it took forever because the one wheel is broken and Mom can’t get a new one because of the goddam government.

 I know it’s Memory Day, because everyone has American flags on their stoops and Mom gets off early at the Kwik Trip and goes in the other room where the top drawer is.

 She told me yesterday there was going to be a parade and we had to wash good in the tub, and not just fart around.  And she laid out the clothes for us and used the iron, which she hates and never uses because it makes the lights go out in the kitchen.

 And Elliot hates being in the tub, but I used the scrub rag on him and we horsed around a little, until Mrs. Guerra told us to knock it off before she came in there and gave us what for, and so we knocked it off.  The water was cold anyway, and it was kind of dirty.

 We were supposed to be getting our pajamas on and instead we tiptoed into the other room, but Elliot doesn’t tiptoe very good.  It didn’t matter because Mrs. Guerra had the TV turned up so loud. Mom says she’s deffasapost.

 So we stood on a basket and we slid open the top drawer and looked in there. There’s envelopes that look boring and some coins in a dish and some chocolate and a pack of cigarettes with one already smoked a little and stuck in the plastic wrapper.

 And the little box.  I take it out and we sit on the floor and open it up and I tell Elliot not to touch it but he always does.  It’s purple and he likes the color, and he touches the ribbon part, and the little metal heart is purple too, and it has an old-fashioned man’s face on it.

 I tell him it’s Dad’s and he doesn’t understand, and he thinks that the old-fashioned man is Dad, because he doesn’t know what Dad looked like.  We put the little box back in the top drawer.

 In the morning we didn’t get up the first time Mom called us and so she was mad and so Elliott cried a little bit.  We had Rice Krispies and because it was Memory Day we got Pop Tarts.  Except at Kwik Pick they are ‘Toasterlicious’.  It was a variety pack and Elliot got chocolate and I got cinnamon. 

 They taste like biscuits Mrs. Guerra makes and they were so dry I had to pick some of it off the roof of my mouth with my spoon.  Elliot was grossed out but he laughed so hard that he sprayed milk and Rice Krispies on the table and Mom told us to cut the crap, and Elliot cried a little.

 Mom says if we are good we can go to the parade and I wipe Elliot’s face and tell her we are going to be super good.  I am so excited I can feel bumblebees zooming around in my tummy.  We brush our teeth and don’t horse around and don’t hardly get toothpaste on our ironed shirts. 

 If we go to the parade there will be fire trucks and clowns that throw candy.  Elliot hates the loud fire trucks and clowns scare him, but all I tell him is there will be candy.  He forgot the other stuff from last year’s Memory Day parade.

Elliot doesn’t have hardly any memory because he’s only three.  I have memory but I have to practice all the time, or some things go away.  Like Dad.  I have to practice Dad.

 Mom tells us to sit in the davenport and we run in there and we both jump on the cushions and make dust float in the sun beams. I want to be good, but mostly I want to go to the parade, but we have to remember and we have to go to the summertarry.   Mrs. Guerra brought flowers for Mom to take and when she saw them her eyes watered and she said she wasn’t crying it was because she had goddam hayfever from the flowers.

 Me and Elliot sit on the davenport and I put my arm around his neck and tell him to be good, and stop kicking his feet.  He wants to go to the parade and get candy but I tell him we have to remember and then we can go.  He says he doesn’t want to remember and he cries a little.  And then we wait, and we are super good.

 Mom gets the little box out of the top drawer.

 

 Hope this finds you remembering,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith