The earliest images from my childhood that I can conjure takes place in Basin, MT on the front steps of Papa Ulsher's diminutive candy-pink house. I don't remember the time of year, but the quality of remembered light suggests that it is a warm afternoon. It occurs sometime before my fourth birthday, before my brother is born and my great grandfather dies. I remember he used to call me Raky the Coon (a play on my childhood nickname, Raky, derived from my initials, R.A.K.). Upon either arrival to or departure from the Ulsher house, I recall vividly a moment of lingering in the front garden and on the three concrete steps leading into the hazy kitchen. My mother is crouched beside me, snapping open a freshly picked pea pod and loosing the contents into my cupped hands. After tasting one I horde the peas greedily, enjoying the feeling of them pressed to my palm, secret and jewel-bright. And now I am sitting on the top step of the small porch, running my hands slowly over the concrete and tracing my fingers awkwardly around the myriad objects pressed there. My fingers pass over blue marbles, pennies, smooth bits of colored glass, daisies traced with a stick, and, most magically of all, sea shells. I run my fingers down the pink ridges of a clam-shaped shell, admiring it and trying to pry it from the step's cement grasp before trotting off to some new distraction. I abandon the peas on the step, contributing them to the collected treasures there. Or perhaps I simply forgot them.
