Neither weep nor laugh but understand.
Spinoza
*
I have two first memories.
The sofa is green with huge flowers imprinted on it, pink
and beige and streaks of yellow or brown, like they were
painted with a wide brush to highlight the edges and borders
of the flowers. The sofa is deep and not too long, three cushions, the same green. The sofa is against a wall in the living room. It is our living room. Nothing in it is very big but we
are small and so the ceilings are high and the walls tower,
unscalable, and the sofa is immense, enough width and depth
to burrow in, to get lost in. My brother is maybe two. I am
two years older. He is golden, a white boy with yellow hair
and blue eyes: and happy. He has a smile that lights up the
night. He is beautiful and delicate and divine. Nothing has set
in his face yet, not fear, not malice, not anger, not sorrow: he
knows no loss or pain: he is delicate and happy and intensely
beautiful, radiance and delight. We each get a corner of the
sofa. We crouch there until the referee, father always, counts
to three: then we meet in the middle and tickle and tickle until
one gives up or the referee says to go back to our corners
because a round is over. Sometimes we are on the fl oor, all
three of us, tickling and wrestling, and laughing past when I
hurt until dad says stop. I remember the great print flowers, I
remember crouching and waiting to hear three, I remember the
great golden smile of the little boy, his yellow curls cascading
as we roll and roll.
The hospital is all light brown outside, stone, lit up by electric
lights, it is already dark out, and my grandfather and I are
outside, waiting for my dad. He comes running. Inside I am
put in a small room. A cot is set up for him. My tonsils will
come out. Somewhere in the hospital is my mother. I think all
night long that she must be in the next room. I tap on the wall,
sending secret signals. She has been away from home for a
long time. The whole family is in the hospital now, my father
with me: I don’t know where my brother is— is he born yet?
7
He is somewhere for sure, and my mother is somewhere,
probably in the next room. I remember flowered wallpaper.
I haven’t seen my mother for a very long time and now
I am coming to where she is, I expect to see her, I am
close to her now, here, in the same hospital, she is near,
somewhere, here. I never see her but I am sure she is lying
in bed happy to be near me on the other side of the wall
in the very next room. She must be happy to know I am
here. Her hair was long then, black, and she was young.
My father sleeps in the hospital room, in the bed next to
