august bends like willow trees

we are here and it is now. further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
h.l. mencken


my mama was living in the upstairs of a small brick house on wabash st in fort worth the summer i was born. she had been attending philosophy and psychology classes at tcu not very far away, and not far from her family's home on lubbock st. my dad was in wash dc, they were separated at the time. my great-grandparents were nearby on simondale drive, a street named for the other contender, a neighbor, in the street-naming of the city of fort worth for the winding avenue their own house had been built on at the top of the hill; there were only two at the time, the allreds and the simonses, and since they didn't respond to queries about being chosen, the name went to simon. my mom would walk across berry past the bank another two blocks all the way to the campus, pulling a wagon with her brother johnny when she was little, finding places to have picnics or to see the exhibits at the science building. her mother got her master's degree in english there, and my dad's mom was working in the tcu library when they met, enabling him to get a bachelor's degree in economics and history without the burden of tuition fees.

i do not like being hurried. no, i do not. but when i arrive, i really do. there had been talk of inducing labor, and the morning my mom went into labor was the day scheduled for inducing. neither of us like being hurried. my mother's voice singing when i was little was a great part of what made my body and my thinking and my perspective, and she never sounded hurried.

such a long time ago, but also now. in much the way a river starts at a source somewhere high in a hill somewhere and flows down into the quadrillionth generation of life's forms which have stemmed from it; there is no measure.

my mother was late to work this week, packing a box of gifts for me. there have been whispered phone calls between her and my sister and juliet. i am very happy: we have started the celebrations days early, i have had such sweet calls, patience! say all the clouds. so i am patient.