The Dipper

I’m walking our black lab, Shady, down the driveway before bed. The gravel sparkles in my headlamp, tiny crystals of ice replacing this afternoon’s mud. It’s clear and cold with a tiny sliver moon, a welcome break from what feels like weeks of foggy inversion. Standing with my hands in the pockets of my chore coat, waiting for her to pee, I wish I could remember the phases of the moon from 8th grade science. Is it waxing or waning? Gibbous, or what was the opposite of Gibbous again? I can’t remember, but it makes me think of Mrs. Blanchard and wonder what she’s doing now. 

I whistle for Shady, then turn back toward the warm glow of the house and switch off my headlamp. The Big Dipper is brilliant tonight, the scoop of it curving westward, right above our porch. 

There’s this thing that happens to me sometimes. Something—a sound, a smell, seven curving stars—triggers what I can only describe as a landslide of memories. A deluge that’s impossible to separate into individual strands. 

It happens now, walking in the crisp darkness, gazing at one of the two constellations I know. One minute I’m yawning, wondering how many times Reid will wake up tonight and the next I’m overwhelmed with memories. 

Driving home in the dark with my parents, conversations with my dad, looking up through the skylight in my parents’ kitchen, a drunken walk home from a party in college, a late September backpacking trip with Levi. 

I stop walking and close my eyes to drink them in. To steep in this feeling of remembering. Just as suddenly, the moments of my life go back to wherever it is in my brain they came from. I shiver, take one last look at the hook of the dipper, then run up the porch steps and head inside for the night.