It was late December and we were living in the house on Fenner Avenue. A cold spell had broken, and the sun peeked quietly through the clouds. I decided to go outside and blow leaves off the driveway. Odie wandered up, long strings of drool hanging from his jowls. I aimed the leaf blower and the drool flew away. He froze, momentarily stunned, then ran around the yard in circles barking wildly. I watched him, leaves swirling in his wake, barking muted by the leaf blower, both of us warm and carefree in the winter sun and thought life really can't get much better than this.
Later, we wandered across Merrimon and aimlessly through neighborhoods. At some point I realized we were in Murdock-Linden, near my first apartment I'd lived in many years, and many cities and many women before.
The apartment was on Charlotte Street just down from the Grove Park Inn. A quiet neighborhood where clean sidewalks passed luxurious brick homes with large windows and well-lit interiors.
Once, years earlier, I was walking through the same neighborhood when a snow storm arrived suddenly and dusted everything white. It was like a perfect memory, crisp and devoid of minor detail. Remembering it again, I felt lucky to have been there at all. And since it was so long ago nothing remains except the memory. I was ghost in time then without even a smartphone to document the moment; a mere observer, as inconsequential as a flake of snow.
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WILSON KOEWING is a writer from South Carolina. He has numerous books out and forthcoming that you should buy. Find them at wilsonkoewing.com. He has been published in so many great places it feels too much like gloating to list them all.
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