Favorite memories

These are some of my favorite memories - if you're reading this, I'd love to know one of yours...

My earliest memory. I am perhaps two and my mother has just finished giving me a bath. She scoops me from the tub into an endless ribbon of terrycloth and wraps me up in the towel and her arms. I am enveloped and warm.

Shooting the shit with Austin and commenting on the superfluity of something he has said. Then wondering if superfluity could be a real word and hoping it is because I like the way it feels to say so much. Like an icy tube for my tongue to slide down. He insists that it cannot be a word. We head for the dictionary - Merriam Webster online. It's a word and I win, which makes me feel smart and sassy and fluent.

No one time, but every time, I find stillness, resting my ear on Bob's chest and listening to the thump of his heart. I try to feel my own heart beat and his at once, and wait for those moments when they are in sync.

Driving up the coast of California with Karen, two unlikely campers. We're so rested and there's so much ocean. Every morning we wake up and watch the surf, eat an apple or some cereal or a peanut butter and banana sandwich. We pack the tent into the car and travel north. Stop for expensive lunch and nap on the beach. Drive further north. Eat an apple or some cereal or a peanut butter and banana sandwich for dinner and watch the surf. Sleep, carried along through the night on the waves that I can still hear three years later. Talking and singing and laughing so much. My favorite conversation that week was repeated over and over. "I'm full." "Me, too." "But we've only eaten half an apple." "But I'm so full." "Why are apples so filling?"

Sitting in my dingle - a dormroom in a suite that is meant to be a double but has only one resident - double single, hence, dingle - sitting in my dingle, junior year of college, revising poetry madly, finding that small pieces of poems I'd written over the previous three years all went together into one poem that actually described something the way I wanted to describe it. That they worked together to convey the sweetness and fulfillment and not-enoughness of sex, and the way I felt while I pulled the lines together was a miracle. I love the resulting poem, but not as much as I loved the feeling of letting it happen.

Letting Laurie cook me pasta for dinner senior year. I'd be somewhere in our apartment and suddenly, she'd say the magic words, "I'm making pasta for myself, do you want some?" And I'd hobble into the kitchen and talk to her and keep her company while she cooked pasta for both of us, sauce and all. And that pasta always tasted better than any pasta I've ever cooked for myself.

Same with chamomile tea and white rice. My friend Bill graduated from college while I was still a sophomore in high school. I used to take the bus from Portland, Maine to Boston to stay with him on weekends. He was a broke recent grad and rarely had much food in his house. He would make me white rice with butter and salt for dinner and together we would drink chamomile tea. I'd never liked white rice or any kind of tea before this, but I've always felt that anything freely given should be gratefully accepted. And I've often found that I enjoy things I normally wouldn't in such situations. That's what happened at Bill's apartment. To this day, chamomile tea and plain white rice are among the strangest of my comfort foods.

Swimming in the post-tropical storm surf on the Jersey coast with Bob last summer. Falling over ourselves as the waves flowed back to sea and the sand sunk us down and confused our eyes.