Steve Liu

WHEN DID THEY STOP ROLLING? Tonight I’m sitting on the porch, watching my foggy breath curl into shapes and then disperse. I try to align my breaths with the sound of passing cars on the street, as if the swooshing, rushing sound might mix with the hot air and become something I could reach out and touch—like waves, crashing and swirling in place. My earliest memories come to me in waves. I don’t remember much of my early childhood outside of photographs, but in the memories that do surface, I’m usually seated on my butt. Low to the floor. And so I can’t help but notice the ways in which young children seek connection with the earth. Some children ground themselves by falling down, tumbling, tackling. I was not a falling-over type of baby. I remember myself as more of a roller. Yes! There was something special about rolling on the carpet, about feeling those ridges on my skin. We moved a lot during my rolling years, so I got to experience quite the variety of carpets. Some were flattened with wear, some scraggly; some were warm in the summer, some would cool you down. Rugs the color of sky, rugs the color of sand. There was no sensation so delightful as rolling on a newly-cleaned carpet, once it’s dried and you could walk around without wearing those crinkly blue booties. When the carpet would finally dry, I’d roll between rooms, roll on the bed, and nearly roll off. I’d get stuffed into a giant comforter and scream I’M A BURRITO! as loud as I possibly could, and keep on rolling from there. Right now I’m sitting through another memory, a grainy videotape. In my mind: me, a newborn, just over three ounces, curled up in the ICU; I can feel the pulse of life-saving machines as they work to buttress my diaphragm, the suffocating green of hospital walls. Then: I try to go deeper, but the images get vague and fuzzy. In one particular memory, I’m sitting between my parents on a towel in Hawaii, and I’ll think, Who takes a three year old to Hawaii? Take me when I can actually remember it! But I do kind of remember it, in the same way I remember those other first memories. Feelings, colors, synapses bound to physical sensations; respirator, heartbeat, rolling water. I’ll be sitting on my father’s lap, who’d also be sitting, back when our furniture was tacky and plastic; I’ll be sitting in the living room, studying the cat, our old warrior-tabby, as she’d hunt around with one of those red ribbons my father would peel off holiday gifts; I’ll be sitting on the stairsteps of the community pool, unknowing that these forever-minutes as a family would be some of the last we’d ever spend together—my father dozing, my mother reading and watching me swim. This was before our old tabby passed away, before we’d stopped getting the carpets cleaned, before we’d stopped gathering for holidays. This was before my parents fell out of love and went their separate ways, before they outran the memory of taking their kid to sit on an empty beach in Hawaii, on a towel, in the sand. Whenever I’d roll as a child, then, I was perhaps reliving some forgotten history, sitting on that towel in Hawaii, wedged between my mother and father, rolling just like the waves had done in the distance beyond. It is nearly winter. I’ve gotten older. Like everyone else, my lungs burn when I breathe in the unforgiving air. But now, at least, these lungs—they can walk on their own.