My life as I understood it for many years began at 11:59 PM on June 15th, 1999 at the exact moment my 18-year-old body, origamically folded into the form commonly known as “a can opener” — one leg (in my case, the right one) bent such that the top of the femur rests, with the help of a bear hug from both arms, flat against the chest while the other leg fully extends, its foot and toes pointed down like a ferocious ballerina’s, while the body is tilted forward such that the convex, knobbled mid-curve of the spine (vertebrae T3 to T6, to be precise) — hit the icy stone-smooth water of the Mariposa Reservoir and then the dull black blade of a huge slate boulder twenty-two inches beneath it.
My life as I understood it for many years before that began on July 12th, 1984, the day your Aunt Hazel died and your Uncle Rowan ran away from home, the day whatever had held your Grandmother May and your Grandfather Albert together despite your Great-Grandmother Alice’s misgivings split like a log.
My life as I understand it today — I should say as your mother, Little Alice, has helped me to understand it — began this morning when I opened my eyes.
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