You sit beside the well, your skirt hiked around your knees, your feet splashed by the cool water your Dad pours into the pigs' water trough. A large sow grunts mild annoyance in your ear as your foot splashes too close to her snout.

You are smiling and laughing. The wind is rustling through the leaves and the grass and your hair and you know that this moment will never end. There is too much life in it to ever fade. It will never end.

As you sit in your high-backed office chair watching a puffy white cloud pass before your window, you are filled with that same sense of contentment as that far away day. Yet your tongue tingles oddly, as though yearning for the taste of something that is missing from this moment that was present in that. Some little taste....

Chills. A piercing wind separates your jacket from your skin in a brief billowing gust. The sky is darkening and you imagine rain as you leave your flowers and bid good-bye to your dad. It's like this every anniversary of his death but you never stop coming. Perhaps you think he's listening as you stand in the wind, grasping for your unspoken thoughts just as the wind tears your breathe.

Hot chocolate. Warming cold weariness away. Work is almost over for the day. You hear others packing up to fly away. Your night is pre-planned. Four more hours here to finish up, a shower, a midnight flight, a quick nap, and then a new day. Where will you be? A moment of anxiety passes over your features, then you lean forward to finish your work.

A girl in a bikini leans over a bicycle rack and you wonder if you were ever that age. Legs and freckles and full-consciousness of your body even as you expose more.

The girl looks up, meeting your gaze and you realize that you are the only one staring. Where did those boys go? You are embarrassed but smile to hide it.

Leather gloves: smooth on the inside, rough on the outside. These remind you of someone, but you can't remember who. You stand a moment more, enjoying the texture, trying to recall a face. Putting them in your basket, you decide you need a new pair of work-gloves for hauling wood for the winter fire.

A bit of hot water lightly flavored with lemon rind and mint sprigs in the middle of the night. You cannot seem to calm your nerves. You keep thinking you are forgetting something, but you cannot remember what. Wood for the fire, turkey for the oven... the only thing not ready is wrapping your present for John. Soon, soon, and then all will be done.

A flash of yellow. You stop your car and turn to your right. Children are playing on a water laden piece of long yellow plastic. Laughter, screaming. You think of your mother. Sweet and pleasant, large arms to sweep you up and give you a hug every time she came to visit....

With a start you realize this isn't a memory of Mother but of Aunty Rose. You frown, trying to remember what one of Mother's hugs felt like, but can't.

A stranger. White coat and stethoscope, he must be a doctor. Excitedly, he seems to be telling you something important. You start to cry.

You remember being born. Pink and small and naked. Your large brown eyes are scared and your large hands clasp the fur of your mother's belly.

Something is wrong here.

A light touch on your shoulder and you see two old ladies beaming at you. I'm Martha, one says, and I'm Maude, the other winks. One of us used to be your mother, Maude says to be finished by Martha's, before you were born.

A white car drives by in the parade and the only thing you see through the tinted windows is a marble face looking back. Its head swivels stiffly, tracking you as the car loses itself in the procession.

A white-haired old lady approaches the mirror and as she looks in, you look out.