Your father keeps pointing out what I don’t remember, and I keep saying, “But here, look at all I do remember.” He wonders where my memory has gone, and I keep saying it’s not that it has gone but simply that I have run out of space. I have filled every nook and cranny with things I wish I could now box up and store elsewhere, to make room for the new. Like I remember making Popsicles out of Kool-Aid, filling the little plastic holders I got at a Tupperware party. And I can remember the Christmas one of you got a Vac-U-Form and one of you got Incredible Edibles, and the whole house smelled of sweet, burning plastic for days, and you both had scars on your arms from hitting those hot plates. I think those toys came with a warning and maybe got recalled, but you loved them while they worked. I remember Crazy Foam, and Fuzzy Wuzzy soaps, which grew fur and had a prize in the center, and those pretty jewel-toned bath oil beads that I think you two gave me every birthday or Christmas for several years, the fragrance Cachet and then Charlie.

I remember smells that way (a whole section of my brain seems to house them), and I love the memories, but I do need the space these days. I can’t recall that your father has an appointment, but I can recall vividly the year we got a Christmas tree that was flocked in pale pink. I remember those temporary tattoos, skulls and crossbones and hearts and flowers, your tired, dirty bodies covered in them after long play days in the summer; I remember hosing you down on the back sidewalk and then filling a warm, soapy tub, Jeff surrounded by plastic boats, and you, Becca, with that bad-looking naked Tiny Tears doll that you took everywhere for years. I drew hopscotch boards for you, the big circular one like a snail, hopping round and round to the center, where we put a big H for “Home.” And then you came home later and later, Becca, in your low-hanging bell-bottoms, which you spent a summer embroidering. I taught you French knots, remember? My mother taught me French knots and the running stitch, and then I taught you just as she’d taught me (hold tight to the needle and wrap, wrap, wrap), and you wore Indian moccasins and a beaded headband and a poncho like what is back in the stores now. You were no longer consulting your Magic 8 Ball by then; you weren’t consulting me either.