Tight Grip

The amygdala assigns emotional significance to clutter I can’t throw away. To souvenirs and books throughout our house. To clawhammers, backpacks, yard signs we hang on pegboards. To ordinary places we visit again and again. This precious tiny thing deep inside my head also helps form shiny new memories. I want to hold on to my amygdala for a long time. Keep it healthy and functioning. Feed it. Maintain it. That sort of thing.

*

We’re camping again. Everyone is camping again. The pandemic told us to. But we were camping before they were camping. Before the pandemic. Before Instagram. The first time you took me camping, it was July. About ninety-five degrees. Humid, no relief. Also my birthday. Dinner was chow mein made entirely of contents from an assortment of Chun King cans. Even the chicken. All warmed in a crappy dented saucepan over a campfire. Somehow the best and worst meal you ever made for me.

*

Thirty years later, inside a more spacious tent, you say something that makes me laugh, but it comes out weird. You say I sound like Ricky Ricardo. That makes me laugh again. Our sleep is regularly interrupted by a screaming wild animal. A coyote? A bobcat? Maybe a raccoon? It can’t be a coyote. A coyote howls. It doesn’t scream. Bobcats wouldn’t be around here. Would they? I think raccoons scream, but maybe they don’t. Foxes scream, but only when they are having sex. No, you’re thinking of cats.

*

When the amygdalae were removed from an ill-fated group of rhesus monkeys in 1939, the monkeys’ behavior took a critical and undesirable turn. One minute they were frolicking in the lab, sharing fun memories about good times. The next, their catalog of emotions withered to nothing, really; their behavior hypersexual and fearless. They also began putting things in their mouths. The kind of monkeys you don’t want at your dinner party.

*

On our morning hike, we come across a young couple. A rugged, stubble-faced guy. More like a dude. With unkempt hair and an Influencer girlfriend. A bucket hat, perfect for beach, boardwalk, or this damn hike, her expression says. A pandemic-era backdrop of wooded trails. A Neoprene backpack and monogrammed Yeti tumbler. He walks a solid distance ahead of her. We were them, sort of, some three decades earlier, in these woods, figuring things out, remember? You were leading the way. I would have followed you anywhere. Even here. Along this same trail. But that was another trail. No, it was definitely this trail. I recognize that rock face. No, it can’t be this trail because the river ran to the left, not to the right. Yes, but you washed dishes after breakfast under that waterfall. I watched you. And you definitely were standing beneath that particular waterfall. How do you know it was that particular waterfall? Because I don’t forget a waterfall. All waterfalls look the same. No, they don’t. The one I remember looked just like that one.

-Amy Cates

Amy Cates is a full-time instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She writes creative nonfiction and is currently working on a memoir in essays and flash nonfiction. In her previous life as a professional writer, she earned awards from the Associated Press, Alabama Press Association, and other organizations.