Although my mother says I was much too young to remember...I think I can remember the day that JFK was shot.
When I think of the memory, my viewing perspective is very low on our old plum colored couch. I can feel the raised, embroidered stitching under my right hand as I let my fingers follow the details while I am supported in the corner cushion.
I can see my mother and her friends that always came for morning coffee, huddled close to the black and white floor model tv, with wadded tissues in their hands and some of them with one anothers arms around their waists for support. I think I hear muffled crying, but I am not scared. I know I am safe. I am not panicked, but I do know something is wrong. My mother turns often to make sure I am still sitting where she left me.
The phone keeps ringing. The old black rotary dialed phone on the end table. Sometimes she answers, sometimes she let's it ring. I'm the only child. Everyone else is at school. I can smell perculated coffee and I am offered saltines and I think I have a baby bottle with water in it next to me on the couch cooling my left leg.
The memory is short, but definite.