jeff is playing xbox 360 and listening to the best of the doors. what the hell? it is dark in our tiny apartment and some girls are finally asleep. me at the computer, him on the floor with the wireless controller. suddenly i feel a wave of nostalgia. what the hell? i am transported to a long time ago and i am holding hands with a boy in a movie theater and he smells like a boy and we are watching val kilmer pretend to be jim morrison.

now jeff is listening to candy machine. he must have his music on mix mix shuffle shuffle. playing perfect dark something something online with a friend and listening to his weird mix. and then i am very cold. and it is 10 years or more ago and jeff and i are in the old black cat, seeing candy machine play on a tuesday night. we are 2 of about 5 people there. the heat is not on. i can see my breath in the club. i am wearing a hat and gloves. we are young. we stay out late. we never sleep. we listen to records and we jump on the bed. he dyes his hair blue or purple. but i am still afraid to. it will take me years to be that brave.

one girl likes to cry to fall asleep. she crys and crys. even if you hold her, she fights it. i worry that sleep might hurt for her. i hope it doesn't. i wonder if she dreams. well, she must. i wonder if her dreams are happy. said girl is growing new hair. it is lighter, perhaps blonde or auburn. it is soft and sticks up. she has big eyes. i never dreamt of having beautiful children.

the other girl laughs as she drifts off. she pinches my face and giggles. she wants to play, but is just too damn tired. she falls asleep to my singing her a song about gummy worms. i put her in her car seat and give her Col. Mustard. He is a handmade octopus. She will wake in the morning and find him. She will talk to him for a while, rather than wake us up. She will chew on his legs a bit and try to bite his head. Then I will bring her sister around and she will be delighted. She will smile and babble as if to say, "oh, hello!"

For a long time, I was waiting for my life to begin. I didn't know, it had already started. Are you waiting for your life to begin? Stop. It is in progress.

I want to remember when I was 5 months old. I think about this a lot. Sometimes, as Anya falls asleep, I whisper to her, "When you can talk, remember what it was like in mommy's tummy. And tell me about it. Remember your past lives if you had them. Tell Rachie about them. Remember your dreams."

One time I met a 3 year old girl who had gotten a goldfish at a fair. Her mother told me a story about the fish. The girl said the fish made her brave. That with the fish, she wasn't afraid to sleep in her room alone anymore. She had named the fish, Dennis Foster. The mother said the girl didn't know anyone named Dennis Foster, so she didn't know where she got the name from. I wondered if Dennis was the girl's husband in a past life. And that was why she he made her brave. I don't really believe in past lives. I would like to. But I don't. I hope that some day someone will prove it.

I think sometimes about this little girl, in her dark room with her husband fish. I think of her as an old old woman, alone after Dennis died. And then it took her 3 years to find him in this life. How much did she have to look? I think of her saying, "good night honey" to her husband fish. I think about this a lot. And sometimes it is sad and sometimes it is glorious. But mostly, I think about how we all need someone. Someone to make us brave.