Dampness, chlorophyl, and popping from the nearby harvest of burning sugar cane. Flocks of cackling blackbirds, and musty dirt as I lay staring up at the blue grey smoky sky. I don’t itch when rolling in clovers — they are wetter than the grass and full of bees, but I don’t care because recess is almost over.

Ten years later, my palms are sweaty, sitting in the car on a back road between two fields where mom is teaching me to use the clutch. There is no one else around for over a mile, but I’m shaking and scared of driving into the ditch at the side of the road. When I turned twenty-one six years later, I was fearless at life, and driving, and convinced recess was a mirage because adulthood makes us different.

Now I have less hair and, just like my vision, my skin has grown coarse in the last twenty-five years. But, thankfully I’ve reversed some of the decisions I made since five that entangled me with the world, and I spend more time alone in my thoughts, just like then.

More important, I remember now that I’m the same person, and the liberation is sublime.