I don't remember when I started forgetting. I think it was a long time ago, but maybe not. The accordion of time expands and contracts in my brain, and I can't tell you when something happened (or didn't happen) in my life--I just know it was in the past. Well, obviously it wasn't in the future. And if just happened right now--I would remember, wouldn't I?

Like right now, I'm sitting here in my chair beside the big window over-looking a garden, and it looks familiar. It might be my garden for all I know. But how I got here--in this chair--I can't tell you. I look down at these feet in wooly pink knitted slippers covering knotted gnarled toes, feet connected to pasty white legs swollen at the ankle and am appalled. Where did my long, slim, strong brown feet, that carried me along the sands of the shores beside blue oceans, that crossed countless borders in thin-strapped sandals, that boogied me across floors of wood, tile, stone and linoleum--where did those feet go? And why didn't they take me with them? I would have gone anywhere with those lovely perfect feet.

Well, they didn't bring me here. Because however I got here, it was these wheels that brought me. I sit in a row of wheeled chairs, vehicles of the old, the damaged, the solitary--all facing windows into this garden that might be mine, if I could only remember.

A set of black flats attached to legs approaches. They stop. A voice says, "Mama?"

I look up. A middle-aged woman smiles down at me.

"Oh, " I startle, "Tina! I thought you'd forgotten me!" I begin crying as my daughter kneels to embrace me.