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Show eleven or twelve? Did we live in Seattle or Virginia? Did I watch them having sex? Does it matter? I remember more of Hawaii, less of Virginia, and a little of how the basement smelled in Seattle. What I remember more fully are the events within my family, though even those come in shards. My father, as much as frequent military relocation, encouraged this casual remembering. Just as he called his second son George, he made up names for the beaches we went to, the movies we saw, even our pets, and then left it to the rest of us to decode the references, growing impatient, stomping on the brakes, exhaling loudly when we failed to read his mind. Details aren 't important he said. You know I can't remember those things. His mind, he implied, was engaged with larger, more important pursuits. I wonder now if his failure to remember didn't rise from deeper waters. What did it mean to rename a beach on the Wainae coast "Track Beach," to deny that spot of shore an identity separate from the one he gave it. Looking back, I think his willingness to forget-or to remember only fragments-came from a need to control, to determine what remained, especially when so much of his life, our lives, were out of control, subject to the whim of the Navy detailer, or the political climate, or a generational anger that was as determined as our hazel eyes. 113 |