This is how your brain folds in on itself. 

It starts with a little girl stepping out from beneath a pop-up tent, a newborn baby in her arms. You’re so entranced by the perfection of rosebud lips and tiny toes and itty bitty fingers that it takes a moment before you fully process that this fresh human isn’t nestled in the arms of a little girl. 

When you do, you stand and gawk at the fully grown adult before you, holding her little girl in her arms.

Wait. No. Back up. This isn’t the beginning. 

A friend is celebrating his birthday, and you’re invited. It starts when you arrive next door, birthday gift in hand, and spot two faces so familiar you can’t remember a time before you knew them. 

“Hey,” your greeting is falling from your lips when a more recent memory comes kicking its way to the surface. “Hey Grandpa,” you call out.

Wait. No. Back up. This isn’t the beginning. 

You’ve lined your kitchen countertop with jars of sugary sprinkles and maraschino cherries. It starts as you’re rooting in the refrigerator for the can of whipped cream to complete the sleepover smorgasbord. A little voice behind you asks where to find a spoon, and you turn to answer. For a moment, you don’t see your daughter’s elementary school pal before you. Instead you see a version of her mother that you haven’t seen in several decades. 

Wait. No. Back up. This isn’t the beginning. 

You’re working the table at a high school dance. It starts when your friend arrives with her boyfriend. She’s a bit older than you, and he’s a bit older than her. The age difference isn’t much, but you’re a young teenager still, and it’s enough that you gawk at the fully grown adult before you. 

Wait. No. Back up. This isn't the beginning either.

It starts with a newborn baby with perfect rosebud lips sleeping in her mother’s arms on the day she meets a grown-up she’ll always know but never remember meeting. 

One day someone will ask her how she knows that old lady, and she won’t know where to start. Her mother knew her, and her mother's mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother, and no one left alive remembers where it all began. 

It starts, and it starts, and it starts.