Monday night

It's Christmas eve, and I'm here at home, obviously with free time to blog, read and play with the cats. My mother is altering her dress for her Christmas concert tomorrow at church. Needless to say, my brother and I will be in attendance.

Earlier today, I was looking through drawers and closets for a blank notepad, when I found some old photo albums. One was a leathery bound volume, and it creaked and hissed as I carefully opened its hard thick cover.

I saw my mom in her white wedding gown, with sky blue eyeshadow and thick mascara -- that was the style then I suppose. I saw pictures of my parents and my brother and me when we were toddlers. My eyes were so small then. Pictures of me and my brother hugging or climbing a tree. Pictures of us smiling in front of a birthday cake. There were pictures of my mom in her fobby mullet, my dad with his bushy black hair. There was a picture of us sitting on top of the orange Oldsmobile. Us wading in the pool at Disney World. Us with our grandparents who, I hate to say it, look the same age as my mom now and my late father.

There was one picture of me, I think it was 1982 or something. I was in a tree, with a denim skirt and white stockings, and my mouth was agape, frozen, in a presumably deafening bawl. I REMEMBER that day. Of course my mom, thinking it was hilarious that I was shrieking my head off hysterically, decided to memorialize the moment by taking a clean photograph of me.

I remember that day. I climbed that tree, and after growing bored with the view, wanted to get down. When I looked down to the sole branch that would be my escape, I saw at the bottom of that branch just inches below my foot a humongous colony of ants. Black ants, crawling in thousands of directions, waiting to eat my foot and then the rest of me. I was trapped in the tree, and probably going to die there since there was no other way to get down. Confronted with an imminent, horrible death, I began crying. And noticing no one was helping me, the crying evolved into an all-out bawling tantrum.

This was literally a cry for help.

It was at that moment my mother stood in front of me (gleefully I imagine) and took a photo of me.

That picture is in a photo album in my house. Clearly, I'm not still annoyed that my mother took a picture of me at a particularly vulnerable moment. Clearly. I closed the leather bound photo volume not too soon after seeing that picture, and placed it back in the cabinet.

Memories. Like the corners of my mind.