my first memory of existence,

of myself,

was a vision of a tiny insect like person

dancing in front of me

cackling like a demon

“Come out of the bushes, Kay!” she kept shouting.

Mom, Dad, and others around her were laughing.

She was delighted. It was her first gang up.

They were joking about my knotted, ratted, uncombed hair.

I must have been three years old.

I remember vowing to myself in that moment, that I would remain behind the bushes until that nasty little thing dancing in front of me was not around.

My next memory of existence centers around a tonsilectomy I had at the age of four. My sister was five. I remember fighting the doctor, trying to kick him as he placed a black rubber mask over my face. I remember being very groggy, carried into the house at home. They tried to give me ice cream but I didn’t want a bite of it, it being too painful to swallow a thing. My sister began to wail when they wouldn’t give her ice cream of her own.

She reminded me how she didn’t get ice cream on that day, consistently, throughout life, including the last time we were together. In her mid-sixties, she let me know she still resents that day. I never mention to her once how miserable it was to be in such groggy headed pain that day while enduring someone’s shrieking and wailing temper tantrum.