I woke up around 3 a.m. and could hear the neighbors outside on the landing, their night still in progress.

I retrieved my trusty sheet, put it over my head, and knocked.

“Trick or Treat,” I said. No treats were forthcoming.

My brother Mike would have been 57 today. I don’t know what to say about that. He could have lived another twenty years had his choices been different. If he were alive, I’d prank call him and say, “Good morning, you dumb bast**d!” and then hang up. He’d probably call back and leave a message, “Sew any non-bunching pillows lately?”

The picture is one from Dogpatch: me on the left, Mike, my sister Marsha crouched on the bottom, and my cousin Jimmy on the right. We got to see a lot of things thanks to Jimmy. I restored the faces in the photo. Jimmy’s gone too, but I’ll take a few moments to think about him and my brother today. And I’ll think about my other sister, the one I didn’t know I had for another 40+ years after this picture was taken.

The nostalgia will undoubtedly make me more at peace as the world swirls around me today; my thousands of steps and interactions will remind me of the frozen nature of memory and time.

Each second carries me further away from that moment so many years ago at Dogpatch.

What a day it was.

What a day this will be.

Love, X
.