I love the feeling of my bones slipping into place. The gentle shifts of my vertabrae finding their rightful spot; the dramatic pops of my hips relieving sciatic pain in my legs. The movements are like deep sighs, stress-relieving breaths, letting my body know that it will be alright, you will make it through another day.

And I struggle to write. Still overwhelmed with the various strands of my life. Juggling jobs, watching my body bloat with hormonal changes, wanting just to sleep and eat and knowing I should be exercising more, reading more, cleaning more, socializing more, weeding more. More, more, more. (I feel like I wrote about this compulsion recently…common theme.) So how to counteract the urge to do more? My head tells me to get organized; my heart to take a long walk in the mountains, road trip to Torrey, hike up Burro Wash, squeeze myself between the red-rock walls, clamber up a boulder, dig my toes into the sand, and stare up at the enclosing cliffs of the box canyon. That’s what I want to do. But today I can only stare at the piece of driftwood I collected last time I was there–a million years ago, with my partner, with toddlers who couldn’t quite navigate the last big rock, with a dog who’s no longer alive–and close my eyes and imagine the wet-sand smell, the cold-cavern breeze, and the quiet unlike any quiet I experience in my house, in my town. Odd how this longing overcomes me. And odd that I haven’t thought of this place in so long. Henry, who is 11 1/2, has never been there. Or has he? Maybe partway. Carlos made it, with some assistance. And Sadie and Maggie dog. And Louie, could that be? He was easy to lift over the big rocks. I used to keep track of these things: who went where and when. I used to keep meticulous notes on my calendar. Perhaps it’s freeing not tracking every life event. But it’s also sad. How will I remember everything?

My greatest fear is losing my mind. Like my grandmother. She wrote the names of people on the back of photographs and took notes while talking on the phone so she could remember. Later her system collapsed. She got lost at the Hildale Shopping Mall, forgetting where she parked her car. She forgot her sons, her grandkids, her name. But she remembered the song she sang to us when we stayed at her apartment, “My bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea, my bonnie lies over the ocean, oh bring back my bonnie to me.” Bring her back. Bring me back. Don’t forget me.