Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found Read Online Free PDF

games, or I’d color, and she’d let me go through the toys she kept in her closet for younger children. I used my baby-talk voice, one that I used sometimes to avoid being serious, or because I wanted someone to like me and thought it might endear me to them.
    Jamie was sweet and generous and listened to me attentively, her kind eyes never leaving my face. But I knew that I wasn’t going to hold up my side of the bargain. I wasn’t going to talk about my parents’ divorce, or my eyes, or anything else that really mattered.
    I wasn’t going to say that I hated it when my mother asked us to make sure that Dad gave her that month’s child support check, or that my dad would hand it to us impatiently and say, “Here, give this to your mother,” as if that was all she was now,
our mother,
nothing to do with him. Or that I was angry with him for remarrying so quickly and didn’t want to try to like my new stepmother.
    I wasn’t going to ask why it was just me sitting here, why they thought only I was fucked-up enough to need therapy.
    I wasn’t going to say that I despised the way that I sometimes caught my parents looking at me now, with worry or fear or sadness or some combination of the three that I couldn’t quite discern.
    No, I wasn’t going to say any of that. I was just going to sit there, and eat my soft, fragrant bread, and find ways to ignore the giant elephants in every corner of the room.

8
    I remember those sleepless nights each summer in June when my brothers and I had our trunks all packed, and we lay in bed tossing and turning, waiting for the clock to hit six A . M . so we could jump out of bed, drive to the bus, and head off to camp for another cherished summer. As a child, the day we left for Skylake Yosemite Camp was my favorite day of the whole year.
    Skylake was one of the few things in my life that wouldn’t change. Even after my parents’ divorce, we were able to spend an entire month in one place, without having to bounce back and forth between houses. My life would simplify, as it did every summer: one cabin, a few bathing suits and sweatshirts, a simple day of fun and competition, swimming, campfires, dances, and, soon enough, kisses. I was just Becky there, not disabled or a child of divorce or a girl who needed a therapist.
    As the bus drew closer to camp and passed through the last small town of Wishon, I craned my neck to see what was up ahead; it was so familiar that I seemed to know every tree. And then the trees would begin to clear and I would start to seeglimpses of Bass Lake sparkling between them. I felt my body clench with excitement, while my brain started to relax to a safe, happy state, knowing I was going to the place where I felt most alive. The memories of my summers there are still ones that I use to access that place inside of myself where I feel like my truest, happiest self.
    There was no better feeling than stepping off the bus and taking in that first deep breath of pine and pure, sweet mountain air, experiencing the chaos of searching for our friends, whom we looked forward to being with for the rest of the summer, and the yelling and screaming followed by adrenaline-filled hugs. Another summer at Skylake had begun.
    One of my favorite things at Skylake was being awoken by the unique sounds of the birds early each morning. The first one awake, I would lie there listening for the sound of my favorite bird. Once she began to sing, her rhythm never changed. It seemed she was singing the words “But Beatrice.” I knew it made no sense, but that was exactly what I believed the bird was singing. “But Beatrice!” (count to myself, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten). “But Beatrice!” (one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten). “But Beatrice!”. . . . It wasn’t a pretty song. In fact, it sounded almost melancholy, but she was there every morning. She never failed me and she never missed a beat, and I always wondered who Beatrice