Paul was remembering on his sister’s birthday her non-candle wishes, or, the obligatory treatment one must assume toward the birthed person. As in, please colour with me today. And please get me a yogurt.

Paul was colouring with his sister. Fisherprice picnic table plastic and placed in the backyard grass next to a playhouse. In 96 colours. She always drew birds. Clustered in trees of neon orange and pink. Wavy squiggles on the page.

Paul was certain his sister’s side of the room had the pencils sorted by colour & the textbooks piled by day in which they would be used.

Paul was “What are you up to tonight Lori?”

“Probably just TV in the room.”

“There is a party at Josh’s frat if you want to go.”

“Maybe. Where is there house again?

“Past Elm. Me and the girls can get you if you want.”

“Just knock.”

“OK. See ya.”

Paul was “I will check the hallways to make sure you can come up. If I cough once move away and hide back here in the laundry room. There is a closet over there. If I cough three times come up and follow me.”

“Have you done this before?”

“No comment.”

Paul was “Do not speak with your mouth full.”

“You sound like mom.”

“You eat like dad.”

“Should I not use quotation marks when we speak? Mostly this need not be said verbally, or even transcribe to terms, as our previous commentary simply occurred as a natural reaction, a sneeze, when we come together, a ‘remember when’ in our glances.”

“This is why I like when you visit — you are a piece of home without actually being home.”

They are their food out of the divided plastic trays.

Paul was sneak into his sister’s dorm or sleep in the truck.

Paul was Ford Ranger (blue) with extended cab, stickshift, & benchseat. The jump seat behind the driver’s seat had his duffelbag stuffed with sweatshirts & socks & a sixpack wrapped in teeshirts so that the bottles would not clink during smuggling. Cassette tapes were everywhere, though no music was playing as he cruised along 22.

This was the way to visit his sister Loriane, written on the back of a solenoid box in permanent pen; bridges over rivers, a road winding round a mountain.

Paul had never visited this neighbor city where his sister colleged. He only had a picture of it from a postcard she had sent. The old stone building set in a hill — this is what he would look for when he got into town.

Paul was buried in his notebook. He was good at dividing time separating & sorting (this visit would be filed under: Loraine Sophomore Year, Autumn) but his notebook was empty besides his timed titles. Containers waiting to be filled.

Loraine was good at drafting. Pulling out a moment from the past.

“Remember the tree in the front yard, the one near the street that I needed a boast to get into. You had some system of getting up, digging your fingers into the bark in and putting your foot on a bump. Gosh, you were a monkey.”

 File under: Before the move, Summer of babysitting.

Everything at Loraine’s engineering school was on a hill. Sitting on sloping grass they overlooked the tops of various university buildings, eventually a main street, then a river. Paul flipped through pages as Loraine stared past the river, looking at the other half of the city rising up.

“Remember buying bubblegum at the deli on the corner.”

File under: After Dad left, Before the move.

In filing there was forgetting; still, a remembrance of what passed, though, a clear distance placed between Paul & event occurred after he wrote a memory down. Storing everything on paper, notes necessary for later story sorting.

Paul was “Remember Dad buying us Italian ice in the park?”
“No, he never did that”
“Yes, cherry for me and him, lemon for you.”
“Mom told him ‘No. It will spoil their supper’”
“No, no, that happened too, but Dad did buy us Italian ice”
“She said ‘If you want to suck on ice I’ve got plenty at home’”
“The flimsy papercup cold in my hand”

Paul was waking up, starting over each morning, forgetting the day week month year white space expanding ahead & there are birds & snacks & handholding infinitely

 

but then

 

melted concrete patches; how to operate a telephone switchboard; worked at the warehouse back then; visiting Loraine at school, above her desk a periodical table; a postcard from South Dakota with a wheat field being consumed by a combine; tonight’s TV lineup; frozen pizza for dinner last night; today’s weather; traffic stopped at the railroad crossing; signed Paul, not Dad; the swingset built in the backyard giving Loraine & me splinters; moving, changes

 

& here, now, a moment that has already passed.

Paul was the organizer of reindeer games. Monopoly was their favorite game & Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer their favorite movie. So intertwined were the two, new rules had been adopted into the game, & cues from the movie changed play. New pieces were tiny & misshapen handmade clay lumps representing their favorite characters, a white ball as a tooth for Paul to be Hermey, guy’s favorite was a little gold snake shape for King Moonraiser, the winged lion king for the island of misfit toys, and a red blob as Rudolph’s nose for Lorraine.

“Go to Jail” was “Go to the Bumbels Cave” and the property spaces had new paper names tapped to them, like Rudolph’s House, the Island of Misfit Toys, and Yukon Cornelius’s Pepermint Mine.

Set out in his living room with looping Christmas movies playing, Paul, Guy, and Loraine would spend days in these matches rolling dice & drinking sodas, snow flurries falling outdoors.

Paul was the marketing machine known as XMAS. The word itself the poorest abbreviation for the busiest of times. Commercial splendor, product placement with song & television tie ins & the idea of full display cases, though Wal-Mart is not a main street nostalgia, just a big box holding & exploding all of the above. & this year’s hot toy. & long lines.

 

This is where the true meaning of Christmas would be inserted.

A list with a bicycle on it. Digging though stockings last. Endless loops of Christmas carols, old versions revised with today’s pop stars. & then your favorite song. Driving through town looking at decorated houses, Paul yelling “Christmas lights on my side” to drown out his sister Loraine’s “Christmas lights on my side.”  

 

So this is Christmas.

Paul was crazy eights in the waiting room with sister Loraine.

Paul was brainstorming. How do you start a memoir not with:

            Paul was born on a rainy Sunday.

?

Because while this is the moment of birth, it is not necessarily the defining moment of creation for Paul. Paul had also heard

show don’t tell.

Sometimes Paul thought blogging was the start. But for impact & interest in reading, Paul wanted to start
with an event that could permeate a live with its metaphoric implications.
The curser on Paul’s word processor blinked as time passed between

 present & past &
childhood &
tuna sandwich yesterday
at lunch had sweet relish in it,

 the kind that Lyric
does not like &
keyboard strokes &
what was the name of the
hospital Paul was born at &
a lack of commas &

 & &

 the same grey
sweat pants worn
everyday
after work &
graduation ceremonies
pure impersonal nature &

 breathing air in a
darkened room
tastes different &
digital strain on the eyes &
forgetting where he

started.

Perhaps fabrication was the key. Unnecessary gravity to a singular event. As if

warehousing working after high school started Paul. Money in pocket &
a dream to not live at home anymore. But not to include the desire to separate self from family in the writing

as not to cast a shadow on parents 

so, instead, a taste of capitalistic opportunity, will power, a linking to
summer days  playing Monopoly in the teahouse with
Guy, Loraine & James,

moving away is fun, is a game, is taking chances &

growing up, because a little money from the picking &
packing done at the warehouse build ideas & rent &
a resume & a starting place for a story to begin with connections that could extend throughout his memoir
full of likes, as’s, was’s, an example being like:

life is a continuous search, one that I started to understand at my first job as a warehouse picker & packer. Like finding a starter or alternator part, each day is like a discovery. The sense of completion at finding a part.  When an object I had passed hundreds of time, never noticing it before, surfaces as the vital piece to fill the order. When I know where to go by instinct. When one day it is all heavy pieces. When one day the finding is all small components.  It’s a game, like life.

Paul was a yellow Tonka truck left out in the yard until the shimmering acrylic paint chipped off, rust flakes, a hole in the flatbed after one too many winters without play,

perched potential energy, transport, release, a dumping of growing out of old toys until

the remnants, crumbling, are stepped on during a game of don’t-touch-the-ground-tag, Paul’s sister, Loraine, using the truck as a jumping point between the swing set & gardenbed railroad ties, as each summer day in the routine as true as lemonade & dips in the pool,

Loraine moved to avoid the ever-pursuing force — it.