Spinning in the Light

In my first memory, I am in my bedroom, inside of a laundry basket, on top of someone’s head, and I am spinning. 

Just a foot below the ceiling, I’m seated on my diapered bottom, peering out between white plastic bars, and the room is revolving, the windows are whizzing by, the sunlight is strobing in my eyes. Both windows are alight with soft afternoon sun fractured through sheer-white curtains. The walls are pale or maybe a soft yellow. They don’t yet display the mural my mother and her best friend painted for me one day, likely while they were stoned: a colorful smear of acrylic paint depicting a cartoon rainbow set in a landscape of trees, flowers, bees, and butterflies spanning three walls. My tiny bed is tucked away in the corner, and fruit-sized toys are strewn across the floor. Between the windows is a child-sized dresser decoupaged with big-eyed children: Precious Moments. 

I’m giggling wildly, my chest heaving with half-panic-half-glee laughter, but I’m too small, too weak,to pull myself up, to get the attention of someone who might stop the chaotic spin. I assume it is Laurie who has me atop her head and is spinning me, even though I cannot see her face. It is Laurie in my memory because  I have no memories of my father’s face from my childhood.  He and my mother divorced divorced before I turned two. Laurie came into out lives shortly thereafter, and became my other mother, so it makes sense that she’s the one who has me in a laundry basket and is spinning me with her hands as fast as a basketball on her finger. Stopping the spinning is beyond my control. I still don’t have words to tell her I want to stop, and I’m not sure I would ask her if I could have because although I am terrified, I am also awestruck by the sheer speed of the spin. I am lightheaded, and the world is distorted in the spun-out afternoon light. 

In some versions of the memory, no one is in the room with Laurie and me. In another version of the same memory, my mother is sitting on the floor, leaned back, her long legs stretched out and folded over one another. She’s looking up at us, smiling, laughing at the scenario. She’s doesn’t seem to sense my desire to be freed from the wild ride.

The spinning, the light, the glee and fear and awe are overwhelming. 

I wonder when I’ll find my way back to the ground. 

I wonder if the spinning will ever stop.