I am from Kroger sliced baloney. From K-Mart windbreakers and GI Joes and soda pop glasses from the Gulf station that were giveaways when you filled up your tank.
I am from the one-and-a-half story housing tract bungalow with a picture window and a finished basement where the hot glue scent and the smoke from a soldering iron rose up together.
I am from Mexican fire bushes and slender yellow irises of the back yard alongside the screened porch, the yard with the silver maple with its twin trunks too slick to climb, whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were my very own.
I am from the opening of presents on Christmas Eve because Dad worked on Christmas Day. From the showdowns on the hexagon bumper pool table, the games I wanted to win every time against my brother Bob, and sometimes even little Tina, though we had to tell her she was too short to play.
I am from roughhousing and wrestling after dinner with Bob until my mom would say, “You kids go outside and get the stink blowed off ya.”
I am from “come in when the street lights come on,” and The Ballad of the Green Berets playing on dad’s downstairs turntable.
I am from making fudge with my father, from my stamp collection of Hitlers and our scrapbook of astronaut heroes, the brand-new World Book set, and the reel-to-reel tapes that held my first stories, narrated before I knew that storytelling could be writing.