Columns

The wool coat looks worse for the non-wear. It is wrinkled from being unworn and crammed in the back of a closet for two years; dotted with dust and dog hair from a dog that departed the family a year ago; in need of a lint brush that can’t be found in the pile of things to be thrown away, donated, offered to the nanny, or shipped to Illinois.

I spent every 4th of July of my childhood with cousins in my grandmother’s front yard (or on the roof of her chicken house) watching fireworks that were shot off from the county fairgrounds a few fields away. 

Anyone from the Midwest old enough to have grandchildren has a black-and-white photo, tucked away in a shoe box on the top shelf of a closest, of a dozen little kids wearing pointed party hats sitting on the front steps of what could be the American Gothic house.

Some of my most vivid memories of Mexico will come from the people I see along the streets. People whose names I don’t know and who I have only fleeting contact with.

And, suddenly, I heard music. A cadence of drums and horns and a rhythmic clomping that I couldn’t identify. 

I reread some of my old columns this week and I found myself  wondering where I was when I wrote them.