artist's way task: remembering childhood.

When I was five I concocted a methodical life-theory one blazing afternoon.

I was sitting in the front seat of our blue minivan, and I was still damp from swimming. Dad was driving. Unlike other adults, he would let me roll down the window and lean my forehead into the wind. Never my feet, though, because he told me it was “illegal” to stick your feet out of a moving vehicle.

Is that true?

I sat cross-legged in the front, gasping at the rushing air like a puppy. I thought: Good, bad, good, bad: that’s what times are like in life, there is a good time, then a bad time, a good time and then a bad.

Dad parked the car and turned to shoot me a mischievous grin. “Who wants ice cream,” he yelled, so that my sisters in the backseat could hear him.

In the rearview mirror I watched Cassie and Jackie clap and laugh, and as I imagined the milky sweetness melting on my tongue, I thought: this is a good time.