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Show too quickly, the booth too small. My father tried to pull my mother back in, but she resisted, you go, you go, she laughs, stay there, leaving my father and I together when the bright flash bursts for the fourth time. In two minutes time, a chain of tiny black and white photos issue from the side of the booth like so many pearls. The first showed me alone, front teeth uneven and in need of the braces that would come in a few years, smiling in the knowledge that I am not really alone. In the next, my mother is bending her head through the door of the booth, a simIeTo"match. And then twice with my father. Proof the moment existed when we were together and happy, not a care in the world. The morning we moved away from Seattle, the car was packed tightly, the pile of last minute possessions having grown immeasurably over night. While my parents worried about where Scott, Bryan, and I were going to sit for the long drive, my babysitter stood with me in the driveway saying good bye. I cannot see her face and no longer know her name, but she gave me a terrarium to remember her by, a miniature ecosystem housed in a Sanka jar. Requiring neither water, nor air, nor fertilizer, it was complete, like an egg. Even though I was moving, I thought, a tiny part of the earth would be coming with me. Though I cared for my piece of the planet as if my livelihood depended on what it produced, the plants died. Two weeks in a hot car were too much for their tiny green limbs. At some point, not too far into the trip, I threw the lifeless jar into the trash no longer caring that it remained shaded or upright. Writing about the experience now, I find myself wondering if I am not confused 111 |