When we were younger the birds flew higher for us. I didn’t care then. Birds would be an
obtainable goal; when I was older, I’d stand taller, and my arms may dare to grasp one of these winged creatures and ground it, cage it, a token of my success. Obtainable goals weren’t my thing. All I could think about was the moon, and every night my outstretched palm would cradle its dim image. What I didn’t know then was that even as I got older, the air around that image would still be the only thing I could snatch.

Some things you don’t forget. You’ll always hold on to the screams and tears that came out of you, the holes you punched in walls long after they’ve been painted over. What you lose are the colors on the houses, what kind of car your grandmother drove, the plot of the show you used to watch. The way you got to Barcelona from Madrid. After a while your memories are more fragments than parts of a whole; but they’re all strung on a distinct path, a process of thought that twists and mutates to this very day. And that’s your timeline. 1994 means nothing much to me now; only innocence, or delirium.

Before the trip my parents had signed me up for a summer camp designed to teach toddlers elementary Spanish. I learned words like amarillo or maybe hamburguesa. I remember being colorblind and confused; I remember meeting a boy named Christian, who I envied, perhaps for his better name or taller height. He was closer to the moon than I. I remember hating that camp.

I don’t remember the flight. The first flight I remember was Venice-bound, four years later; even then, all I remember from Italy was a small room, a sad mother and a swarm of pigeons. We may have been in a boat, too.

But I remember where we stayed—a hotel on the same block as a huge department store. Our room had two queen-sized beds and many drawers. I was determined to explore it, and my curiosity yielded a great fortune in one of the drawers. I had discovered that the previous occupants left a stockpile of MicroMachines, my favorite toy. What luck! My mother almost didn’t have the heart to tell me she had just unpacked them there, and that they were intended as surprises for me throughout the month. This would not be the only time in my life that curiosity ruined delight.

The only other thing I remember in our hotel was the day that I threw up. Another theme that strings my childhood together is the sequence of instances in which I vomited. Perhaps I considered it traumatizing then and so committed each time to memory. I remember throwing up in a large bowl, but I also remember throwing up in the toilet. I don’t know which memory is correct, and perhaps it is both; but it may also be neither. The truth is that I remember so little, I can hardly trust that which I do.

My sister hated me. She was five when I was born and knew right away that I would usurp her throne as the “baby.” When she found out I was special—broken—she hated me even more. Not only was I new, but I was disabled. And yet, the day that I was bedridden and vomiting, she came to me with a gift, a Spanish knock-off of a Transformer. I remember the toy well; it was a white-and-red racing car which turned into a menacing robot. This was not the same sister who forced me to dress in her old tutus for her and her friends’ amusement, not the one who always told me to go away; this was the sister who loved me. I do not recall if I said thank you.

I thought the moon in Madrid was much bigger than the one at home. I thought that I was getting closer, but I couldn’t read the books about space in Spanish, and I had already exhausted those I brought with me. I began creating my own facts about the moon, about space shuttles, mapping out my future as an astronaut.

Perhaps I wasn’t too young to enjoy the wonders of European architecture and history, but I was definitely too petulant. I would complain of being bored (as I am told) and also of being tired; my parents resented me for wasting my youthful energy, but my aunt showed pity and carried me on her back for many of the boring, “educational” adventures. I did not care for statues, clocks, old battlegrounds or new buildings. My family has many pictures of these various spectacles, and I can proudly say that although I see myself in them, I don’t remember a single one of them. I did, however, care about the castles. And I remember them. The steps were the height of my entire legs and I nearly had to crawl up them. The rooms and towers smelled like dust, gravel; back then I truly believed the places to be restored relics of ancient battles, and not the refurbished tourist spots they are now. I sometimes wonder if the tour guide tired of my incessant questioning about ghosts and treasures.

It at one point occurred to my parents that they may have spent too much time trying to learn the language in order to better get around in Spain. At one point my father cracked open a dictionary in line at a Burger King and told my mother he was looking up “ketchup,” to which the man behind the counter asked, in effortless English, “You want ketchup?”

“Sí,” my father responded, thoroughly embarrassed.

Potato chips taste the same in every language and, perhaps, to every creature. In Spain the zoos are a little more “open-world” and I was lucky enough to befriend a young elephant who expressed profound interest in my bag of chips. He ate them from my hand and I remember the feeling to be something like a suction cup. There is a photo of this, too; maybe that’s the only reason I remember it.

Near the end of our trip, disaster struck in the form of a condiment. We were seated in a booth at a restaurant/shop outside of Barcelona treating ourselves to a final foreign meal; or, I should clarify, that the rest of my family was eating adventurously, while I stubbornly demanded I have chocolate swiss cake rolls which I still, to this day, consider a delicacy. What transpired then was only a flash and I would be lying if I said I remember I saw the man, but I swear the tale is true—a masked robber approached our booth and took up the bottle of mustard (mostaza), which he squirted all over my father’s face and in his eyes and on his nice sweatervest, and, in the haze of confusion, took my father’s wallet and mother’s purse. I would be lying if I said I remembered the look on my parents’ faces, and if I said I understood then what had happened. My mother told me that I asked, “Daddy, why do you have mustard on your back?”

I’ve never eaten mustard, but I hate the smell.

My parents never had the heart to tell me I was too blind to be an astronaut. They didn’t have the heart to tell me much of anything then, really; it was fortunate when, later that year, my grandmother would in one fell swoop tell me that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were all grand myths. I don’t remember if I spoiled it for the rest of the kids, but I probably did.

When I started school that fall, it was my teacher Mrs. Weigel who told me I could not be an astronaut. To her credit, I suspect she assumed my parents had already broken the news, and that I was just being indignant. Soon after, I decided I wanted to become a writer. Maybe I can’t reach the moon, but at least I can write about wanting to try.