Week 12, Theme 1

Prompt: Go back in time. Close your eyes. Search through early memories for one that holds your attention at this point in your life, at this moment. It can be a fragment of some kind---as little as an image or a sound that somehow mattered and goes on mattering. Or it might be an anecdote or a narrative, a story that sticks out. But it should be a memory of yours from more than ten years ago. Try to render it as fully as possible in prose, deciding how you want to represent it. For example, you might do it in the present tense, like a dream, or in the past; in the first person, in the third person, or without a pronoun reference, or in some other form; but consider how the form you choose interacts with the memory, perhaps imitating it in some way or resisting it, providing an alternative texture or perspective. In any case, your goal should be to render the memory with detail and accuracy and vividness, to make it present for your reader as it is for you. Do not editorialize about it or interpret it, except as may be implied by your rendering of it.

Around Toledo, Conor started to complain of itching under the cast covering his arm. Katie, always a gentle soul, offered to scratch it for him. She scratched it for all of Indiana. Finally, the red and gold Ford Windstar puttered into Chicago. Dad, frugal as ever, put us up in a ratty motor hotel on the edge of the city. Mom talked about crime and gangs as we drove through the wide boulevards by Lake Michigan. At Conor’s behest, “I Believe I Can Fly” had been playing on repeat for a few hours; Meghan was contemplating methods to destroy the tape.

I don’t remember what we did in Chicago that day. There’s a picture of us four siblings, looking miserable, standing in front of a statue of Michael Jordan. The hotel rooms were so disgusting that Mom forced us to leave the city early the next day. We forgot my favorite blanket under the bed in the hotel. We drove an hour further up to Rockford, Illinois and checked into a Holiday Inn. Conor and I were thrilled to at last find a hotel with a swimming pool. We spent hours there splashing each other while Dad fell asleep on the hotel bed watching basketball. I can still remember the dark wood ceiling of the pool and the musty smell that it brought to the space.

The next day seemed easier than the first long day of driving. It was seven hours through Wisconsin before we saw the glistening waters of the Mississippi from the bridge in Minneapolis. Conor’s arm still itched during the ride, but this time Katie joined Meghan alternating between sleeping in the back row and eating licorice rather than scratching. We went to a clinic in the city almost as an afterthought; turns out Conor had a pretty bad rash under the cast. He shrugged it off – after you trip over a bubble machine and break your arm, not much fazes you, I guess. But that’s a different story.