I vividly remember turning eight. It’s probably the first birthday that I remember with real clarity. We had just moved to Pittsburgh, back to the United States after living in Japan.
So we were in the house I grew up in by that time, and the rest of my childhood years are informed by memories in that place: walking the top of the split-rail fence in the backyard, roller-skating in the street, planting our Christmas trees around the lawn, whole-wheat waffles for breakfast of a Saturday morning.
I’m wondering what my eight-year-old is packing away now to take with her. I’m wondering what she’ll remember. The possibilities, as I can guess them, are limitless. What registers, I wonder, after it’s taken in by those blue eyes?
This evening I helped her pull newborn caterpillars off my rosebushes. She screamed when she saw them, so happy was she that they had arrived. She has loved these caterpillars and treated them as pets every spring since she was four, but tonight she was a bit squeamish for the first time as we pulled their simultaneously furry and squishy bodies off the prickly stems.
She counted them: “One, two, three…. Nine! We have nine caterpillars!” she said.
And then, “We’re the luckiest family in the world.”
