I Remember...

I remember my dog Chico… I remember Maine… I remember how the water was so cold and so clear and so smooth and so clean… I remember the smell of the wooden house… I remember the way the light shone in over the lake… I remember the sound of my voice echoing back from the trees on the other side of the water…I remember how pleased Rolfe seemed with himself that he got me a fishing license… I remember being embarrassed of having to wear a life jacket… I remember how bored I was fishing…

I remember the smell of the umber room that was on the second floor of Camp Clear’s main house… I remember the feeling of the sand between my bare feet and the wooden floor… I remember how the screen door would creak every time you opened it… I remember the sound of the crash of wood on wood as it swung back with no resistance into the frame… I remember running through the prickly dried pine needles, gritting my teeth through the points pricking my bare soles… I remember being selfconscious of my lanky body in my lime green striped bikini… I remember the sensation of drowning if I were to breathe in the thick steam of the sauna… I remember bringing a cup of ice into the sauna to breathe into… I remember how I felt like I was so cool… I remember having row boat fights and races with my friends… I remember how much I hated Mike for deciding he was the only one who could paddle the paddle boat and that if you wanted a ride you had to go with him… I remember trying to sabotage him… I remember collecting all the frogs in a canoe… I remember throwing the tiny frogs back into the lake and seeing if they’d swim back… I remember the few who did…

I remember the smell of low tide… I remember the hopeful tension of hunting for razor clams… I remember the excitement of seeing a stream of water spit out from the small hole in the ground… I remember the frenzied caution of digging quickly to catch the clam before it burrowed beyond my reach… I remember the triumph of feeling it and wrapping my hand around the clam… I remember the pain as I realized why they are called razor clams… I remember the panic as I saw my middle finger bleeding… I remember how uncomfortable it is to have someone apply too much pressure to a wound… I remember how interesting it was that I could write my name in the sand as the blood from my hand fell in small spots… I remember picking the sand out of my cut a few days later…