Englewood Cliffs, NJ

For the vast majority of my accessible childhood memory, my parents lived in this town. There are scraps of other places, but mostly places I've only heard about: West Orange, Jackson Heights, and ... that's about it. My childhood memory is a fragmented, threadbare affair, and my sister-in-law informs me my oldest brother is no different.

I've always assumed that the nieces and nephews I've interacted with these past several years wouldn't remember anything about me, because I don't remember anything from their ages. But apparently they are getting a substantively different upbringing with things worth remembering (oddly, me perhaps being one of them).

My parents used to live on the north side of town at 22 Cambridge Place. That house still exists, albeit completely remodeled – no one has yet torn it down and erected a McMansion as is happening all over town. I do have memories from that house intact. And not all bad ones, believe it or not.

I guess I've been fascinated by memory recently, plumbing the depths of what I remember about that house. It had, and still has, a pretty large backyard with a fence around it – a common feature for older houses, but McMansions are huge atrocities on relatively small plots of land that yards are largely being done away with.

That was where me and my brothers played and explored. Ample tree cover, an old but usable swing set, a shed for my father's gardening equipment, which horrified me because of the spider life that took a liking to the place.

And one infamous night when my brothers and some of their friends camped out in the backyard in a new tent someone had gotten. I, the youngest, wasn't invited to the party. I remember this as fact, not as memory, but at some point I decided to go out and try to scare them.

I think I snuck up and created a shadow against the tent wall and that did the trick in scaring them. That lasted the whole of a few seconds before they realized it was me and they proceeded to chase me around the backyard in the dark. I headed for the gate, which was usually open, but they had closed it for the occasion. Hilarity did not ensue.

Again, most of this is fact memory, but when I impacted the wire fence, that's something I remember. It was just a flash, me running at top speed and brought to a sudden stop by the fence. I think I remember seeing red against white.

The aftermath memory reverts to facts. My parents, as usual, weren't around; I don't remember them involved in any of this. I vaguely recall one of my brothers, I think my second brother, taking me up to my parents bedroom where he called them to tell them what happened and field advice. I forget if I needed stitches, but I think the scar above my right eye is from that incident.

Fast forward to adult memories.

I was in 6th grade when we moved to my parents' current house, ending those formative memories. At my parents' current house, I finished elementary school, attended high school, left for college, visited during breaks, graduated, left for Japan, got dragged back from Japan, left for law school in San Francisco, set up a life in San Francisco, threw away my life in San Francisco, returned to my parents house, left for the monastery, returned to my parents house, and finally left for Taiwan.

And this time, visiting from Taiwan, I find remnants of stuff, relics, from my life in San Francisco. I got rid of a lot of stuff before I left, gave a lot of it away to friends (I had friends), but quite a few pieces made it back to New Jersey.

And this time, enough time has passed since I left San Francisco that these relics now have meaning. For example, what was just kitchen plates and bowls before now conjure meaning. Independence, living a life. That matching kitchen set was bought at a Bay Area flea market. Beer glasses that I snuck out of bars and clubs, because, Christ, for the price of beer, I should get something out of it. My collection of coffee mugs. Pots and pans that I used to conquer my complete lack of comprehension of how to cook.

Relics now. It's unthinkable now to return to the U.S. from Taiwan and set up that sort of life again. I tried it, it didn't work. And now I have these plates, bowls, cups and mugs still wrapped up in newspaper for shipping as evidence. And memory.