The Circle

I am five years old. My father is about to begin his master’s degree at Oxford University. My mother takes the train to London every day. She works as a secretary for the company that years later will build the Bosphorus Bridge. Each evening we pick her up from the train station. My father cooks dinner. We are being enrolled in school. I’m not yet old enough for first grade, so I go to kindergarten.

My mother comes with me for the first few days. The children sit in a circle around the teacher, who is telling a story. I stand up and start playing with the toys. My mother, embarrassed, apologizes to the teacher and tells me to get back in the circle. The teacher smiles and says, “Let her be — she’ll join the circle when she’s ready.”

Over the years, circles open and close. New people join, some drift away — the circle is always changing. I have been telling myself stories ever since. It’s been three years since my mother passed away, yet she still tells me to join the circle. My father’s been gone five years, he’s still cooking dinner.

Now, at sixty-one, I gather the pieces of myself I’ve left in every circle I entered and left, trying to complete a puzzle spread out on a folding table by the window.