Microhistory

I have a stash of old letters--one of the what-I-would-rescue-from-fire items--that's disappeared. It's not a small stash--it couldn't be lost in a pile, or behind a book. I can only think I packed it in a box when we were preparing to move, and now the box is tucked away someplace. In that stash of letters is the death certificate I have that would tell me when Jim died. It was the end of July, I think. 1992, I think; I remember what apartment I was standing in when I got the call. But I'm terrible with dates. I can remember maybe five, total. Three birthdays, one first meeting, one adoption day. No deaths. Perhaps that's why--being so unacquainted with dates--anniversaries always seem like events: they surprise me, and then I don't know what they mean, or what to do with them.

My mother can remember her great-grandparents' birthdays. She can remember my father's parents' birthdays. Mark--the other one; not Maisie's Dad; the one who's getting married--his capacity for remembering dates bowls me over. No wonder he grew up in reference editing in the publishing business.

"When were you here last?" the receptionist at the eye doctor's office asked me yesterday. (My eyes have been hurting; I need stronger glasses.) "A few months ago," I said. "February, I think. My eyes started hurting almost immediately after." She looks. "You haven't been in since last March," she corrects me. Off by nearly a year.

It was late July, I'm sure of it. Shereen, my best friend then, was in grad school in Chicago. I don't remember calling her, but she told me later that she didn't know what to say because my message was so raw: "Jim's dead." I was earing $16,500 a year, paying $300 in rent. There was horrible brown paneling on my living room wall in a seedy walkup apartment on Maryland Avenue; I was looking at that paneling when Olya's voice came crackling over the wires from Greece. My sister was visiting; she had her hand over her mouth while I had the phone to my ear. I left to be alone after I hung up.

But I can't remember the date.

***
Teacher assignment letters are to come the last week of July. Liam waits for the mailman, though he doesn't know any of the first-grade teachers. He wants to see who's in his class. Maisie asked me to call her when her letter arrives. "Oh I HOPE I don't get Mrs. M!" she moans into the phone. "She's such a grump." The grocery store has dump displays of crayons and glue sticks up front--$.99 apiece--and Lilian Vernon (which I hear is on the brink of bankruptcy) sent out their Back-to-School catalog this week. GapKids had backpacks on the sidewalk this weekend. Liam's six-year molars cut through this month, as did his two front teeth. Maisie learned how to dive.

Whatever the date, it's a pretty good time.