The church bell chimes and it is 7:00 a.m.  The sun promises.  The flower boxes bloom yellow and white and gold.  It is cold in my room.  Silent still.  The others here are all asleep, late, tucked away in their dorms.  I wanted my own space, couldn’t share.  I’ve shared my whole life with Sue and Bob and Mary Beth, Dave, Andy. . .the list goes on: all eleven of us demanding something around the old kitchen table that jutted from the wall, all of us gathered around while my father stood at the helm stern and impatient ready to dole out whatever it was that might be enough.

I fell asleep last night watching Auschwitz, the Final Solution.  I am going there and feel I should be prepared.  I tell Sam in a text and he replies: have fun.  I assume his tone is sarcastic or dry or something;  he is hard to read, always.  He won’t/can’t go; these are his people.  Back home in Saint Louis, he still dons the attire, studies the Torah, tells me –again in a text –that his rabbi is from that region in Prague where the Jews are buried twelve deep, one on top of the other.  I send him a picture of the gravestones, haphazard, the little rocks on top keeping the souls down. (Later back at home it will be months before I see him, Hebrew prayer book, bought in the Jewish cemetery, in Prague, long forgotten.)

I awake in a panic, what did I miss?