I glanced at my cell and saw a confusing text from Dad: Does Shoshana know? We have to tell her. My gut seized. Something was wrong. My parents split when I was an infant but kept in touch, long after I grew estranged from my mother and extended family. Dad occasionally provided updates on their recent calamities. Surely, this was one of them. I called him. Nothing. C'mon. I called again and this time he picked up. No hellos.

My two young children, clad in neon swimsuits, danced around impatiently in the backyard, checking on the progress every now and then.  Our new inflatable pool—turquoise and gray with an attached blow-up slide—was being filled with the garden hose; it was taking forever for any noticeable progress.  It was mid-June and the Wisconsin weather was in the low 70’s; I wasn’t about to tell my kids that even when the pool had filled to an acceptable volume, the sun still had to heat the water, cold and sputtering from the spigot, and that it was likely to take days, not hours. 

I get home a little after midnight. Mom is awake reading Joyce Meyer on the couch and Dad is upstairs sleeping. I head to the kitchen to grab some water. She takes off her reading glasses and watches me.

“You’re not supposed to be out this late with a cinderella license.”

The road unfolds in front of us, a black ribbon of tarmac glittering in the summer heat. It is one of many roads I have taken. The rearview mirror reflects the same view, a yellow dotted line that connects us to the next destination, and the previous. Were we ever there? Over a hill, the road disappears, and I wonder if we too will disappear as we follow it.

At a beach on Madeline Island, my son and daughter searched for skipping stones, flat and smooth, perfectly sized to fit their little hands. They would have been six and nine that summer. We had gone to the island to sightsee, a day trip to visit a friend of my husband who had retired there. She drove us to a quiet inlet tucked safely away from the mighty waves of Lake Superior, and there we walked across the rose gold sand and there we found the stones.

I remember the sound as a thud, an enormous, blunt thud, louder and more resonant than anything I ever heard before. My head jerked sideways, then returned to center buffeted by a wave of air. I knew something bad had happened, something irreversible; nothing good makes a sound that big.

I didn’t learn to read until I was eight years old, a full month into second grade. It’s not something that entirely made sense, since I had learned how to spell simple words in the previous year, and I could speak English with the same ease as Spanish since the end of kindergarten. Reading, however, was something that had slipped past until the day my teacher took me aside, bewildered by my scattershot collection of knowledge.

The story starts more than 4.6 billion years ago. Somewhere in the Local Group, the cluster of galaxies that the Milky Way lives in, a star died. It might not have been a massive star—maybe only five suns big. But it grew too big to support itself, and so it burned out. The outsides exploded, throwing dust and star matter into the universe—a supernova—and the core collapsed in on itself. The engine of its heart gave one last pump and ceased to exist. It left behind a dense neutron star, and a cloud of debris.

Dear Past Me,

Congratulations. You are flying high and holding on tight. From the perspective of those on the ground, it seems like you could be floating up there forever, gripping the strings of a colorful bunch of balloons, symbols of success in a society that requires outward markers. One of yours is filled with the confidence of a post-graduation job as a public defender, where you will save the lives of your clients and probably fix the entire criminal justice system while you’re at it.

As my parents’ only child, I always listened for bits of grown-up news or gossip, especially when they spoke in hushed tones or in “code.” Without siblings to distract me away from the business of the adults, I was often privy to all sorts of dirt. But, whenever I asked a question about something I overheard, my mother shamed me back to childhood with comments like, “Little pitchers have big ears!” or even better, in Italian, “Fatti gli affari tuoi!”

I’d waited an eternity, but I’m finally holding my brand-new Deutsch Reisepass. It’s stiff and unyielding, unlike my mother’s and grandparents’, which are worn, faded, and pliable. If I handle those old passports too roughly, the prominent swastika and red J on the cover may turn to dust in my hands. From dust to dust.

Noah and I were walking the other day when we heard a baby crying. Like really crying. Like drowning out the traffic and the birds and the kids playing in the schoolyard across the street.

“Mom, did I cry when I was a baby?”

Day 1/42 in fourth trimester.

The universe shifted
and changed,
made space and formed
a new being
within my old self
and now
I too am remade

Home birth sounds so

Homey! Sweet! Safe from fear!

What a welcome, to bouncing baby

Who will arrive through legs, in arms, home

I heard the words, but they had never really registered. “Remember, no sleep for two year!” my boss warned when I shared the news of my second pregnancy with him.

You remember your father’s fingers curling around the head of your new born baby. They are long, the nails rectangular and pared, clean pink and white, like the baby. Her head fills one of his hands and he uses the other to cradle her body neatly to him. He has his hands full, which is why, when the tears start to leak out of his eyes, he has to turn away, towards the window in the corner of the hospital room.

Dear Past Me,

It’s your first day of college sleeping under crisp new sheets in your bed in your dorm room. You’re listening to your roommates breathing softly in the dark, two complete strangers who have been randomly picked to become your best friends, the people whom you are to navigate through this scary change with. You’re questioning the first big decision your mom has not made for you: college.

My mother’s treats have always been unexpected, precious morsels,
savored as much for their surprise as for their flavor—
a summer lunch of a lobster roll and coffee frappe at Gulf Hill creamery,
a butterscotch candy retrieved from deep within a purse,