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When I was four or five, I got a red car coat for Christmas. We lived in Houston then, and it got pretty cold in the Winter months. It had a hood, and the hood and cuffs were trimmed with white plush, and it had ties in the front, which my father was always tying to keep the cold air out of my ears, as I was prone to earaches. I never could remember to tie it. I sometimes think now I 'forgot' to tie it just so my dad would stop and tie it for me, like he did my shoes. I always felt special and safe when he did those things for me.

I wore the coat everywhere, and like now, loved being outside in the cool, clear Fall weather. My father always called me Litte Red Riding Hood, and told me to watch out for the big bad wolf. In my childish mind, I always expected to encounter him lurking just behind a tree. But not with my father there to protect me. I still like hoodies to this day, and have a whole closet full of them.

 Anyway, my favorite thing to do was to help my father in the yard. We lived on a big property with trees, and they all dropped lots of leaves in the cooler months, so my father would rake them all, then burn them in a big oil drum. I always wanted to help him, so he got me a little bamboo rake, and I would rake the leaves into little piles. Before long there would be 20 or so tiny piles of leaves all over the lawn, which always made him laugh. Then he would gather all the leaves and drop them into the drum, causing flames to leap into the air amid thick, acrid smoke that made my eyes water. I always wanted to toss leaves into the drum, but he would never let me. So I was content to sit in his lap, watching the fire turn orange and red, throwing sparks and making my face hot. Sometimes if I am in an industrial part of town, especially around railroad tracks, I can smell that same smell, and it takes me back to those days long forgotten.

When I applied for my passport, I Googled the address on my birth certificate. And there it was - It felt funny to see it all from a satellite view. I don't know if the house is the same house, but I bet the trees are the same ones. One of them looks like it is about 40 feet tall.

The strangest thing about my birth certificate is line 20:  I hereby certify that I attended the birth of this child who was born alive (born dead was typed over with x's) on the date stated above at 10:52 A.M.

See, I never knew what time I was born, or even what day. Anyway, the strangest thing is, my son was born at the same time. 10:52, although I was born in the morning, and he was born at night. Anyway I thought that was pretty interesting.

I remember a lot of things that other people don't. I swore all my life that I remembered being in the isolette in the nursery at the hospital when I was born. No one believed me, of course. But I was two months premature, so I spent two months of my waking hours in that place; how could it not be etched into my memory?

One year it flooded really badly, and power was out all over. After that, my family decided to move to Arizona. We came here shortly before I turned five. I remember a hurricane, not because anyone talked about it, but because I remember it. I don't actually remember the event, but I clearly remember the aftermath. We all stood out there one night, looking at the world, which had gone black because of power outages. I remember my older sister holding me in her arms... she would have been 12 or 13 then. I remember looking down at the deep, black water and holding onto her for dear life.

On the way to Arizona, we stopped at my grandfather's farm, in Lemitar, New Mexico. He was the sweetest, kindest man I had ever known, outside of my own father, of course. I remember he had an outhouse on the property, and if nature called, you had to go out there in this rickety, scary-looking structure made of weather-beaten wood with no light inside. Inside was a huge dark hole in the ground with a toilet seat over it. I hated going there...I had to go by myself, and was always terrified I would fall in and no one would ever find me.

That experience is mostly fragmented. I remember horses, and almost getting trampled by one when I wandered into the corral, my father screaming at me to get down on the ground and lie down, and as fast as I did, I saw a huge dark shape moving towards me, and realized the shape was a horse, and it was jumping over me!

My father was petrified, but I thought it was awesome!

We ate oatmeal in the kitchen, then my father bundled me up in my little red car coat and my grandfather hugged me tight, weeping and stuffing my pockets with candycorn, which I love to this day.

We pulled away in the blue Buick, and I crawled into the back seat, looking out the back window and waving to my grandfather, staring until his form receded into the distance and he became a dot on the landscape. I never saw him again.

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