I guess I have always drifted back there, so often that I have memories tucked within memories, like carpool lines, moments of waiting, when something pulled me backward. I recall clearly waiting for Becca during her swim practice those cold early mornings before school, the air smelling of chlorine; there were echoes and splashing and a kind of false warmth when outside it was winter, snow on the ground. And I remember being there, not just once but many times, too hot in my coat but not wanting to shed everything, because the whistles were blowing and it was time for practice to end and the day’s work to begin. But I closed my eyes, and there in the dozy haze with the sounds of water, I drifted from our suburban comfort into that second story of my childhood home there on School Street; last I checked, it was still there—a simple wooden house, tan with dark-brown trim, a steep center staircase, and a radiator by the door, where we laid our gloves and scarves.

I can close my eyes and know every square inch. I know the sound of my father’s footsteps leaving for his job at Waltham Watch, and then his return in early evening, already dark in the winter months. His movements through life were as precise as the timepieces occupying his days, the close fine-tuning of parts, a focused ability that reassured me but I suspect had the opposite effect on my mother. I remember her standing, hands on her hips and toe tapping. “Tick-tock, tick-tock,” she said, moving her hand like a pendulum, impatient to get out and go wherever it was we were going.

I remember hearing them laugh in the room next to mine, leaving me to feel both comforted and left out. My mother’s laugh is one I can still hear on a good day, and yet I can’t even begin to describe it to you. I tried to imitate it once, alone in the car while I watched the rush of children swarm from your school, and my voice was thin and tinny, nothing like what I was hearing in my head. Still, I place my memory of it there, one to handle as gently as a piece of recording tape. These days, there would be a real recording to keep, but not so for my mother; her voice is only in the heads of those of us who knew her. Now, there is no one who shares this with me.