I had the idea that I needed to go look around my mother’s hometown. So I did.

Some people have the fondest of memories about things they did with their grandparents – storybook things like making cookies or going fishing or re-telling family tales or laughing or having that feeling of being loved no matter what. That is not my experience. I have a single, mostly spotty memory, of my grandmother and I decorating a birthday cake. And not one memory at all of doing anything with my grandfather. (I was a timid child and he scared me – he was gruff and said “goddam” and smoked cigarettes, and I wasn’t used to any of those things.)

So my childhood memories of this town are pretty limited. On this visit, the only way I could find their house was through a set of triangulations that involved a row of elm trees on the edge of a schoolyard and a memory of the path I walked from the house to the trees.

Nothing else seemed even vaguely familiar. But I’m not sure why I expected anything else, given my history with the place.

Sonora, Texas
photographed 1.27.2022