Cleaning out old journals, I come across an entry made during lunch with one of my nieces on a summer patio where we gave each other words to write about and then read our responses to each other over iced tea and fries.

I wrote about yellow and light and a few other things but I don’t know what words I gave her. I wonder if she still has her journal too.

Another thing we did was play off the Joe Brainard riff of “I Remember” where you write fast, never pausing, listing and listing all the things you remember in one or two minutes.

Here is my list from that long ago iced tea and fries patio…

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I remember a cat named Inky.

I remember potato salad in a tree and pop bottles in ditches.

I remember black licorice and how I thought I liked it better than red but didn’t really.

I remember flamingoes.

I remember feeling sad for elephants at the zoo, and polar bears too.

I remember making radish soup which was really just radishes boiled in water and how my mum and dad pretended it was edible.

I remember carving pumpkins.

I remember making snow forts.

I remember shovelling the driveway.

I remember the cottage we used to go to and how I was pretty sure one of the rooms was haunted but how it didn’t really matter.

I remember the National Gallery in Ottawa and excellent lunches in the cafeteria.

♦

I, of course, don’t remember writing any of this —

— but I do remember every one of the remembers.

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