Nonfiction from NER 41.1
I. APRIL FOOLS
History begins with someone else’s memory of you. It begins with accepting that memory as your own. I want to remember the sensation of curling into my grandfather’s woolly armpit as he reads to me months before he died. A stack of books in bed with us. But all I can remember is climbing up the furry stairs on all fours and looking over the top step into his bedroom to see if he’s awake. To see if he can read to me. What I remember is the anticipation of warmth, of the perfect fit between my two-year-old body and my grandfather’s armpit. My sensations end with carpet and hope. The only lie I repeatedly tell is when I claim my mother’s memory of these reading sessions as my own, a history in tenderness.