Reminiscent days fill my brain, leaving no room in my gray hard drive for present day thoughts. Life has become so stressful that my mind switches to auto run. You know, the mode of self-defense and survival. The overwhelming flood of everyday stresses triggers the auto reboot switch to pop onto Hemisphere Avenue, located south of the skeletal cavity. It’s the moment when your body temperature rises rapidly from the lack of flowing air you’d wish you were receiving from the hand-me-down oscillating fan on the hottest summer night. The only air you manage to catch is the semi-cool breeze circulating past the window every ten minutes. Every nagging fly, gnat, or mosquito buzzing past your ear convinces you the darkness gets thicker by the minute.
Electrical sparks flicker throughout my frontal cavity, and my body begins to protect me from the surrounding enemies. I become numb and the hairs on my neck and arms stand at attention. Colorful, florescent lights illuminate the streets and familiar neighborhoods lead me toward familiar houses of laughter, adventure, and memorable experiences. The streets are covered with chocolate and every front door is wide open, enticing me with waving hands, percolating music, delicious-smelling food and billboards listing the featured memories playing at each house. So many featured playbacks to choose from, it would take days, weeks, or even months to enjoy.
Memories of first kisses, first crushes, first dates, first loves, boy- friends, best friends, parties, shopping, sweet six- teen, a license to drive, first car, legal twenty-one, drinking, more parties—countless mornings and afternoons of sleeping in to recover from drunken parties; weekend getaways, diva trips, first new car, first new home, first real job, pregnancy, first- born, then suddenly the memories freeze. The music stops abruptly, the doors to the familiar houses shut and then pure-white sterile lights shine bright.
My eyelids begin to flicker rapidly and my ears start ringing from the overload of words tailgating at the entrance of my outer ear canal, causing a massive pile up of information. My brain begins spinning like a windmill downloading the messages received . . . and then my eyes begin to focus in on the images standing before me. I decipher the last three words that made it through my inner ear,
”Ma, do you remember when?”
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