Begin the begin. I've forgotten everything.
I have misplaced the facts.
Somewhere
here on this desk
is a scribbled treasure hunt reminder.
I think.
The coffee is ready, the dog needs a pat, the phone rings, it's me again. Seven chapters in and I'm still expecting this book will detail its own past. Like, where's my 50 cent tour? Not important? maybe. It's not my eyes that need to find this. This one, many, complicated, easy, "I get too distracted" thing.

And that's what too many beginnings looks like, I'm the fucking American dream skipping like a record.

At two years old I was two years old. On my first Sunday in the land where "if I get lost look for the mountains they are always to the west." I parked myself neath the Columbine Catholic Parish Pews. They were olive green like so many things back then. Up close they smelled like dust but underneath, which was where I was trying not to talk trying not to fidget as one does at age two in a church, the pews smelled like the rest of the place. Frankincense and myrrh. It smelled like Jesus' top drawer. It smelled like, oh hey there's a Parish bulletin thingy under here too, it smells like blue ink and crosses with one crummy cartoon it's held my attention for... Hey who are you?

I spent the rest of the boring mass playing with her, she lived with her parents in the pew behind us. We had good real estate because we were by the door which led us OUT of this place after the kneeling and standing was done. The door my parents were ready to bolt though, after grabbing the children in shame because of the somewhat chatty conversation I was having with the girl under the pew. But my parents didn't bolt. After "a sign of peace" the girl's parents invited us to dinner. This was not the Church Lady's way but she was so pleased that her girls were playing so nicely with these new friends. I was pleased too, thinking every Sunday would be as adventurous as this. We left though the convenient exit and went into their lives. Not two weeks after we arrived her family was moving away. But there was a parting gift. An introduction to another family with two boys, their oldest my age. The freckle faced boys' parents were a hit and they weren't too bad themselves, even my older more modest sister couldn't resist the trips to the ditch out the back door with long sticks and cat tails. The two boys family became four boys and they moved to the Springs where we played at the Air Force Academy, while our parents played tennis. We ran around the Cadet's empty Recreation Center, sometimes managing to sneak into the gymnastics room where there was a sponge pit. At full speed we could do any kind of quadruple flip we could get after jumping off the spring board. The Pit was full of blue and green ham sized foam wedges and so deep we had to pull each other out of it.

As a group of six children averaging in age around 7 years, having mastered the Springs many back woods, which were just past the Kitchen door, having personally slid down a Ponderosa Pine and lived to tell about it, and spent Every Sunday on adventures Mr. Sam masterfully planned including 7 mile hikes up a mountain with two children still in diapers, the peanut butter smashed sandwiches, cross country skiing trips, with their third son in a leg cast hobbling up the steep parts of the trail. The Pit may have been the safest place to play that day, much safer than playing crack the egg on the gym's trampoline, which ended our fun in the gymnastics room with half a front tooth in my little sisters hand. The rest of the time, which felt like an eternity, we just ran around the gigantic concrete rec area/ bomb shelter, that later reminded me of a really good scene from Enemy Mine. Four Boys became Four boys and two girls.