"Three, Two, One" Click

My finger traced through the window’s fog, each line forcing trails of condensation down the pane to sink into the old wooden sill. The stars were shaky, no doubt, some with six points instead of five, some that looked more triangular than textbook. I exhaled back onto the murals, warm breath disguising their bumps and imperfections in a fresh layer of fog.

I had done this every winter since I was young, painting sunshine in its current lack thereof. At the same window too: it was the biggest one in our small condo, the wooden sill still supporting me though my mother swears I’ve outgrown it. I just have to tuck my legs in, that’s all.

Winter was my least favorite season as a child. I only wore the color yellow back then and refused to put on a jacket even in a blizzard. Summer was all I ever wanted it to be. “If it happens all the time, it’s not special anymore,” mom would tell me, tucking my sun-in blonde hair behind my ears as I cried on the first day of September, 1989. She was a gentle creature, comforting me in her stern yet motherly way. I never argued with her like I did dad - she was honest. For what I recall, anyway.

That day, the first of September, is one I will always remember. Polaroid photos fade in my desk drawers of me and my cousins, fresh out of the lake at seven thirty in the morning, wet hair sticking to painful sunburns. We were grinning so hard we barely felt the pain.

My aunt Tess had taken the photo: “Three, two, one –“ click. A bittersweet moment, captured, fading at the bottom of a collection of memories. I remember looking for mom to take the picture because she knew what buttons to click, and Tess was known to be a trial-and-error person. I only had two sheets of film left: there was no room for mistakes.

I had burst out of the lake, wet hair slapping along my skin as I bolted up to the small beach-house, sand flicking up the back of my legs. The air smelled like fish and lake-water, mixed with the fresh morning dew and just-risen sun that warmed my back from the Eastern mountains. Soaking wet and shivering, I climbed up the wooden steps to the deck, careful of splinters (I had faced them one too many times that summer).

“Mom!” I shouted, out of breath. “Mom, we need a picture! Mo-“ Tess appeared beside me, from out of nowhere, grabbing my soaking shoulder with gripping fingers. I turned to look at her. Innocent. She held my polaroid in a shaking hand, biting her sunburnt lips and leading me back down the deck to my waiting cousins, still splashing in the crisp morning air. “Tessie, I want mom to take the picture.” I pouted, crossing my arms tightly. Childlike, which I was at only eleven.

“I know, baby.” She sighed. I looked up at her. Innocent. She gave my shoulder a gentle shake – a reassuring gesture that confused me. “Your momma… she’s in the shower right now, okay?” I pouted harder in response. Shaking her hand off my shoulder, I ran the rest of the way to my cousins, launching myself back in the water.

“Tessie’s takin’ a polaroid!” Everyone fell over each other to get in view, Sarah climbing on her brother’s shoulders, Mark playfully pushing me out of the way. We were a mess of limbs and laughs, scrapes and sunburns full of lake water. Even faded, the picture still captures that moment, some grains of sand stuck in the edges, holding on to the final summer before everything went awry.

I keep that photo in the bottom of my drawer for a reason. My newer favorites hang pasted to my drywall, facing every which way and hung with polka-dotted tape in every color. My friends and I posing in front of our high school lockers, at parties, at restaurants with cups of grown-up coffee in outfits we never wore again. These pictures keep me present: it’s my life now, mid senior year, close to graduation. Summer is different now than it was then, and I tell myself that change is a normal part of growing up.

Winter’s even become my favorite season.

But the truth is, those memories, happy on film, remind me of everything I wish I could forget.

Tess took two polaroids that day, using the last of the film. I didn’t mind. She took one for Sarah, James and Mark, and handed the other to me. I picked my favorite one since it was my film. I had put the photo on the cracked wooden picnic table next to the lake where Tess sat, watching to make sure nobody drowned. Now I know she was probably avoiding what was going on inside, against her own protective will.

That day at the lake was my last: five Augusts spent at the cabin, once full of four rowdy children and two happy families. Tess and her husband, Uncle Pat, still own it. Last I’ve heard, Pat’s trying to convince Tess to put it on the market. It wouldn’t sell for much, but since mom left, broke contact with everyone, my aunt hasn’t been working. They were close – twins. I wouldn’t be surprised if the abandonment hurt Tess more than me.

After the polaroids, my cousins and I rampaged the lake for a few more hours before Pat and dad announced we were packing up the cars. Groaning, we trudged up the beach to the dingy showers inside, washing out the grains of sand and dirt from our matted hair. I remember that I wore my favorite yellow dress home, the one I’d sported almost every day unless mom forced me to wear something not as torn. It reminded me of summer, and all the memories that, back then, I never wanted to forget.

September 1st, 1989 was the last day I ever wore that dress.

Nobody spoke on the drive home – three hours of heavy, claustrophobic silence. My carsickness was too nervous to kick in, anxious to break the tension that I didn’t understand.My dad drove fast: 70 in a 55, or whatever mom grumbled about under her breath. Usually she would scold him loudly: “Joe, we have children in the back! Could you go any faster?” Then she would turn to us, roll her eyes, and say something like, “70 in a 55. Your daddy’s tryna impress me.” Mom and dad would share a laugh then, their fond looks only reappearing in my memories. Dad would slow down for about 15 minutes before “forgetting himself”, and it became a routine for us. But now, the whole ride home, mom never addressed him. And the whole ride home, dad’s white knuckles gripped the wheel with an anger I’d never seen before.

The window is tired of my hands, condensation cooling my fingertips to the same pale frustration as my father’s. I’m drawing our family – or what it used to be – stick figures etched into the glass, happy, already disintegrating into the background. I sigh loudly, smearing the figures with my palm and staring at my reflection in the pane. I’ve always been told I look like my mom, and now that I’m older, her face stares back at me. I only wish she was here to see how I’ve grown.