the genealogy book

, an aside, i suppose,

I am four years old, and trying to understand a bee sting.

I am twelve years old, pushing the cap on the spray can of Raid I’ve been handed to foam wasps as they rise from the woodpile. My father and his hired man, Jack, are removing the wood scrap and logs from the back shed, revealing a lack of floor and an open space down four further feet to ground level. The woodpile most likely as old as my father. Wasps meander and lift as balloons in a breeze. I am killing wasps. Another movement of wood, another corresponding burst from the pile. They land at my feet.

I am forty years old, at my mother’s wake. At the end of the evening, once my father retires, I release an array, an exhalation, of curse words into the air from the sidewalk. I laugh at the ridiculousness of the gesture.

My mother is dead. She will remain this way forever.

I am eight years old. I saunter up the dusty summer driveway to collect the day’s mail, as I’d noticed the mailman drive past. A thread-trail of white marks an airliner, overhead. I can see the shadow of wingspan across the north field. Our black lab, Heather, follows along. She bounds through the long grass.

I am forty-nine years old. Our young ladies inadvertently step on a nest of bees in Clare Latremouille’s yard. We came to their farm for a visit, to see her. To see their horses. Both children are stung, but, as we discover, neither are allergic. This is a relief. Aoife is stoic, but Rose requires her blanket and stuffed bear from the car, so she can lie down. Clare attends to their stings. We don’t know this yet, but this will be the last time we see Clare. Her cancer will return. The pandemic has yet to come.

I am forty-nine years old. It is Christmas upon the homestead. This will be the last time my young daughters will see my father alive. He struggles to catch his breath, employing a puff from his breathing tube, to help open his lungs. He is nearly twelve months into what will become a sixteen month erosion from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, before a morning he will not wake.

I am fifty-three years old, and attending a memorial for Clare on their farm. The garden has lost its gardener. The horses are gone.

I am fifty-four years old. I am attempting to form sentences. It is time to prepare lunch for our young ladies.

I am five years old, and lost in Cornwall’s Brookdale Mall. I could not find my mother.