I don’t remember when they told me. I don’t remember the hour, the day, the month, the season. I don’t remember how I initially felt, and I don’t remember how they initially felt.

That’s not entirely true, I suppose. I remember when they told me, perhaps in second grade, a full year before we actually moved, that there was a possibility that we could move to California or New Jersey. Tearing out Hello Kitty stationary, writing with a purple gel pen, I remember making a T-Chart, the same kind we had learned to make in Mrs. McCaskey’s class. One side New Jersey, one side California. There were only three items on the list. Under New Jersey, carefully written in big second-grader print: Snow, and Cousins. Under California, it simply said: Beach. Looking at that list now, I guess it would seem that I wanted to move to New Jersey, if only because my favorite cousins would live nearby. I got my choice. We moved to New Jersey.