It was a cardboard carousel of flying horses, with little animals—teddy bears, bunnies, cats—riding on their backs. One of my parents would set the mobile in motion, then they’d shut me in and leave me alone. But that was okay because the mobile would stay in motion until I was asleep. Babies don’t wonder why a thing doesn’t need batteries. To them, the world is filled with magic. It isn’t until you get older that the adults begin to dispel the magical things, one by one, for your own good. It’s their duty, they say, to prepare you for reality. Sometimes their reality turns out not to be yours. That’s what happened to me. Things were just always there. If I was drawing, I didn’t have to look up to grab my scissors or eraser or another pen. I reached, and picked it up. Who knows if I ever would have noticed, if it hadn’t been for my getting sick halfway through summer, just after we moved to San Diego. I woke up one morning and couldn’t swallow past the spikes in my throat.
