First published 1 April 2016 in Gravel Magazine.

This one is short and cheerful.

I took a craft workshop with Kathy Fish, and she asked the group to write about a memory. I did remember a tiny village, pretending, and love.  I do remember knowing, even then,  I was always looking for magic to happen as a child.

The experience also rememoried for me (I like that word from Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”) that there is a childhood goodness that is like no other kind. It calls to mind Ray Bradbury’s poem, “Remembrance,” in which the narrator finds a message in a tree that he placed there 40 years earlier in childhood. Here’s the final stanza of Bradbury’s poem:

It was a message to the future, to myself.
Knowing one day I must arrive, come, seek, return.
From the young one to the old. From the me that was small
And fresh to the me that was large and no longer new.
What did it say that made me weep?

I remember you.
I remember you.

So “Cotton” is my old note from the me that was small. “I remember you.”

Thanks so much to the editors at Gravel Magazine, Tina + Amanda + Michelle + Matthew; Karen + Nicole + Diane.  Here is a link, and thank you for reading “Cotton.”

Photo Credit:  A.E.Weisgerber