my head and heart have sounded like this for the past few days:

i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you

please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back

i am crazy. am i crazy? i am definitely crazy. am i crazy? i have lost my mind. have i lost my mind? yes, i have. i am crazy, but... am i crazy? yes yes yes.

once, my grandfather told me that trees were alive. no, i insisted, they aren't. he must have asked me how i knew, because i told him that trees don't move. "but they're moving right now," he responded.

we stared at the trees. "sometimes they don't!" my argument was thin, i knew. still, he told me, "they never stop moving."

for the past twenty years, i've stared at every tree in moments outside, when i'm alone. i look for evidence of stillness and haven't found one yet.

this year brought the birth of a new sensation, that of constant worry.

i read an article in high school that stated many women, statistically, cope with worry at a more heightened level than men. they lose sleep, have panic attacks more frequently than their male counterparts. at the time, i was experiencing the most anxiety i'd ever known and remember thinking, surely, this is true. but i suppose that, as we grow older, we understand better. i will understand with more wisdom in twenty years, will mark my years by the quantity of present stress.

when i was younger, i'd run to my mother. even in college, i would think about how i'd like to hug my mother when my heart felt broken, or my mind felt muddled. but as i've grown older, my mother is less of a comfort to me. i've watched some of my friends lose their own mothers in recent years, witnessed the overwhelming grief. we are so very temporary, aren't we?

*

i do not remember the day that i stopped believing i could fly--only that, as a young girl, i believed with the utmost sincerity that one leap from the stairs would send me hovering through the living room. it wasn't until my later childhood, around ten or eleven, that i recalled this trick of nature and almost tried again. unfortunately, fear kept my feet sealed to the stairs, and i dismissed these memories of flying to dreams, not realities.

several months ago, i spoke with andrea, who believed she, too, could fly. i decided then that maybe what others consider heretical are actually god's own magic tricks. a child's sweet innocence, dismissed as witchcraft, could be god's source of laughter and joy.

i have, of course, no sound theological evidence of this idea.

*

my old best friend was married one week ago. we loved books then, would have sleepovers that consisted entirely of reading until we fell asleep. when i wet my pants from laughing too hard at fourteen, she kept the secret and hid my pants in her parents' washing machine. when we tried to make a massive cookie at ten, we learned that, while the outside may burn, the inside would remain doughy and uncooked.

she was beautiful, a simple white dress and delicate veil. she glowed.

*

rarely do i feel like an adult, but i convince myself that the adults around me are the same--children on the inside, constantly amazed by the oldness of their hands, the way they cook meals and pay bills. i use christmas lights and soft blankets as evidence, perhaps concealed by a self-proclaimed appreciation of finer things.

on a beautiful day, we'd like to soothe the cramp of stress in our stomachs and climb a tree, listen to lullabies, sleep soundly. we are babies, quite simply.

when i was quite young, i lived some kind of magical life at my grandparents' house.

at home, my mother made me try gross foods like cream of wheat. we drove in a carpool, and i had to wear snow pants to school. we lived down the street from a dangerous pit bull, so i could rarely play on the front porch. but at my grandparents' house, i lived in a state of constant discovery.

my grandparents, for one thing, owned a boxful of antique instruments. an accordian, bongos, maracas--a whole box of these strange, noisy instruments. sometimes jay and i would have a parade, or we'd just play a bizarre cacophony of noises. sometimes the neighbor girl--janice, who smelled like a tuna fish sandwich--would come over, and we'd play hide-and-seek with the instruments. one time, i told janice how she smelled, more out of curiosity than meanness. she got angry and told me i smelled like poop, and i cried.

janice and i also played dress-up. i didn't have dress-up clothes at my house, but my grandmother had accumulated a nice collection of multicolored veils and fake bouquets and lacy shawls. janice was kind of mean, so she always got to wear the fancy clothes when we played together. but sometimes i played by myself, pretending that a ballerina always wore veils and carried flowers.

my grandmother collected tea sets for me. i had tea parties, though rarely with real tea. "would you like some tea?" i'd ask in an affected voice, pouring coke or water from the spout. we sat at the table on the sunporch and look at the gardens while drinking our tea, real gardens. my grandparents have a large, wandering yard spotted with several gardens. lisa often visited her own grandmother, natalie, across the street. she became my favorite tea party guest. she fascinated me, even though she was a little younger, because grandma told me that she'd been born with her organs outside of her body. to further pique my fascination, my mother told me all kinds of stories about natalie--how she kept ducks as pets many years ago, how she ran over her drunk husband on purpose with their truck. they had a tire swing across the street, and lisa's uncle nathan--only a few years older--used to twist and spin with me.

shortly before we moved from ohio, my grandparents hung a swing from a very tall tree on the far side of their yard. it seemed so big when we were kids--miles of rope reaching to the branch, a seat for two children with room to spare. the swing, when pushed, swept over the ditch surrounding their yard like a moat, then flew toward the ivy patch. we could pretend to touch the leaves of the tree.

on summer days, we played on the deck. we blew large bubbles with wands bigger than jay. i pulled out my barbies and pulled their pink 50s convertible across the slats of wood. sometimes my grandmother filled a bin with water and soap, and i'd pretend to wash plastic dishes.

on winter days, we built snow forts. after blizzards the snow would overlap from yard to deck, sometimes five feet of snow. we'd tunnel through the whiteness, then throw snowballs at each other. or we'd build snowmen all around the house--five, six snowmen. on a tall mound of snow, i practiced fainting romantically. on an icy patch, a frozen puddle, we'd ice-skate in snow boots. if we could recruit my father, he pulled us around the block on a tobogan.

my grandparents' attic was, essentially, a miniature room. one could reach the attic through a small door. when i was so little, it seemed like a clubhouse. i loved to explore this room that smelled like mothballs, to look at grandma's old jewelry and clothes, to find pictures and report cards belonging to my mother or aunt. i wanted to meet other girls someday who liked these things, too, and have a club in this room.

in my room, once my mother's room, i had a daybed. i slept in the "secret" bed that pulled from underneath, and my grandma would tell me stories. she layered me with cotton sheets, quilts, an electric blanket. in my room with yellow flowered wallpaper, i found grandpa's yearbooks and old wedding scrapbooks in the closet.

before they remodeled the kitchen, a red booth surrounded the table. my grandmother taped fake elevator buttons inside the kitchen closet, and we pretended to ride from floor to floor. it was my favorite hiding space, this little closet. after the remodeling, they created a long bar and a little nook with a skylight--perfect, of course, for drinking hot chocolate while it snows.

*

i haven't been to my grandparents' house in five years. my parents say that it seems to be falling apart--cracks in the ceiling, warped wood.

but i miss the coat closet, the one with the window by the front door, the way that it seems to stretch into a netherworld. even as an adult, i think it seems endless. i miss the way my grandmother keeps pazelles and other holiday goodies on the porch, because it's very cold out there in the winter. i miss her garden flowers, and the smell of hot tar on the summer street. i miss their crabapple tree.

i miss the representations of magic, the shadows of childhood. this place is home, more than any home we ever had.

my family is pretty well-known in our old hometown, though i suppose everyone is well-known in small towns.

my aunt and uncle own a lumber company. it's the kind of business that sons inherit, and my cousin josh will be owner one day. some of my early memories are playing house with the floor models of doors. i liked to lock jay out. everything was absolutely fascinating--toilet models, chandelier models, lots of metal and wood products. it made me feel important to hang out in the office. i think my aunt kept cookies in there.

my grandmother worked for the local credit union. all of the teachers banked there, and sometimes my grandmother gives me updates on the first-grade teachers. before they remodeled the office, a poster hung near the bathroom that said something like, "nothing can hide the stink of smoking." her boss gave us candy. even now, the employees there know how sandra's grandchildren are doing. they are trying to refinance my car.

at his old company, my grandfather invented some method of doing something more efficiently. i found out from a yellowed newspaper clipping buried in a scrapbook. he worked in an office with a leather chair and globe-shaped paperweights. i was vaguely afraid of the building and its mod-looking carpeted chairs in the lobby.

before i was born, my mother was a real estate agent. she made commission from the house my parents bought, the house where i grew up.

every friday night at a local restaurant called garfield's, they had a macaroni-and-cheese special. we ate there a lot--macaroni, chocolate milk, and muffins from the bread basket. sometimes the whole family would be there, sometimes just a few of us. we knew everyone in the restaurant at any given time, including the owner, who was greek and gave us chocolate bars.

during a family dinner--the kind where everyone came--i decided i wanted to dance. i decided that the family at a table around the corner would be my audience. they had two daughters. i squirmed out of my chair, meandered over to their table, and began to dance. the parents seemed a little mortified, but i wanted to be a star. so i spun around like a ballerina and squiggled a little, then ran away. and then i came back. five times. the girls began to say, "uh-oh, mom, here she is again." until finally, the mother said, "excuse me, our daughters are trying to eat and you're disturbing them." so i ran back to the table and stayed there.

garfield's had mirrors on the ceilings. jay and i would make faces at them all throughout the meal.

eventually, garfield's changed ownership, though i think it's a family business. my mother still maintains that you're utterly alone in ashtabula unless you have family. your family is your best friend.