Sometimes when I’m too sick to work, but not too sick to putter around my house complaining that I’m too sick to work, I go through all my things and start (but never finish) organizing. I came across some more childhood pictures of me and my siblings. Some of the best times in my childhood were when we left the city. I remember this one vacation where we went to the Adirondacks. There was no electricity, a lake and a rope swing. And I had the time of my life. I don’t remember anything specific that made it great, just that we were leaving something for somewhere temporarily better? Who knows. I guess specifics don’t matter when that sense of happiness is still with you. So imagine my surprise to flip through pictures of three preposterously contemplative kids in a place I remember as being one of significant joy. Did we not have fun? Why were we so subdued, so solemn? Were we too aware of the subtext of the trip — that it would be the last with just the four of us? Were we on some level cognizant that our lives, when we returned, would change forever? That once our mother remarried and I was no longer the youngest of 3, but the youngest of 6, that this part of our lives would become our history? I remember us as happy. Except for the very last photo, why are these pictures contradicting my memories?
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