Hashtag Throwback Thursday. Here is a photograph of me squinting into the sun. This is the late 70s or early 80s. This is back in my materialistic days. I am holding the poster of Farrah Fawcett I bought at the newly opened and very cool mall. The one that would eventually put the mom and pop shops of my neighborhood out of business, but I didn’t know that then. I have purchased this poster because both of the posters of Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol were sold out, also because I figured the poster of Farrah Fawcett would distract my brothers long enough for me to get away from their fists, which in those days was code for love. Just after this photograph was taken I would tack the poster above my bed using three green push pins and one black because I couldn't find another green one. Here are other things I purchased at the mall: two patches, and several quarters worth of plays on the game Pac-Man. I am with two of my brothers. They have just finished throwing rocks at their friends and are about to bicycle to a place where they can light something on fire. First they were enthralled by Farrah Fawcett though and I knew I had made a good purchase. I am uncertain where my oldest brother is, but I will guess that he is either roller skating or smoking cigarettes. He has outgrown throwing rocks at friends. He might be kissing a brown-haired Italian girl behind the garage. She will remain nameless. We are on the east side of Buffalo, New York. It is summer and it is a song. In a few short weeks it will be autumn again and I will become a rasping cough in a square of light from a window with a view of falling orange and red leaves. I will be sick with influenza and a hand so cool and tender will be smoothing my hair. In my deliriums, it will be Farrah Fawcett, then Tatum O'Neal. Their hand will caress my cheek, red with fever. An oak leaf will drift through my view. I will see it in the instant of its fall, flat and spinning, held aloft by my blink. But before that, the summer is bright and lush. It is sunlight, Farrah Fawcett, Tatum O'Neal, and me.

Hashtag throwback Thursday. This past weekend driving through my neighborhood I saw three little girls chasing each other with spray bottles on a square of green in their front lawn, squirting each other with water and laughing in the sun. Is this what old age is? The noticing of the tiniest of moments that surround you and then send you hurtling backwards in time and space. Here is a photograph of me and my sister. It is summer on the east side of Buffalo, New York. We are at our grandmother’s house on Dorris. Everything is overgrown and there is the roaring quiet of the heat. My sister is ten years older than me. This is before we became aware of ourselves.  This is before the world set its fangs in us. Before disappointments and heartache and death would take away the people who loved us most. I was reminded of this photograph by the three little girls playing on a lawn a thousand miles and many years away from the time it was taken.  My sister has children older than we were then. They are making lives of their own now with their own memories of my sister. Her oldest might remember our grandmother. There is a photograph of her with my mother, my grandmother, and my sister that is framed in my sister’s house. But this. She has never seen this photograph. She has never seen her mother in this moment. When my sister was buoyant and unbothered and sunny. This is not to say that she isn’t still all of these things, she is, but as you all know life sometimes wipes away the idealism of youth and replaces it with a pragmatism that in comparison might seem dull. This is what I want to say to my nieces and nephew. This is what I want to say to you. That in our youth we were thirsty for the spectacle of it all. For the smell of the earth after a rain, for the way the winter succumbed to a soggy April which turned chartreuse then filled in and became the plump and overgrown summer. We shouted at the awe of the drawn world. We raced through the sheets flapping on the line. We drew white lines on the pavement with rocks. We filled our bellies with the water from the garden hose. You can see the girl stopped in this photograph in my sisters eyes now if you look close enough. If you pay attention and listen you can see the airy girl in the photograph rising up, you can see that she never disappeared, but I want to add something to the photograph. I want to add to it the moment that wasn’t captured. The moment so obvious it didn’t need to be captured. The moment just before we went outside in anticipation of the beautiful mysteries that the world had in store for us, before we knew what all of those mysteries might be, and drank it in.