[Three photos: (1) Selena as a baby. (2) Selena as a toddler, in her father’s lap. (3) Selena as a youth, wearing glasses and smiling in front of a Christmas tree.]

Memories are sometimes fickle things. Clear and sharp in some places—a summer sky at noon—and distorted other times. You grasp at them, and they slip between your fingers like fog. The passage of time and the advance of my blindness have dulled what remains of some details, and it's a rare and precious thing to find even a single sighted memory that's clear. I suppose that's why I cling so tightly to those summer days. Even now, when I hear the old familiar roar of that tractor engine, I can feel the world grow just a little bit bigger and I yearn to stand above everything else and see my rural home again, the way I used to.

Sweat drips down my neck, cooled by sudden, frantic gusts that sporadically twist and turn from every side. Rays of light and heat and inevitable sunburn makes me wonder if hell is truly real and if so, did Satan buy some real estate in West Kentucky? Underfoot, dry earth and grass coats my toes, tickling and itching each individual digit. Over my shoulder a roar; a green and yellow behemoth lumbers slowly up and down, row after row, leaving each blade of grass all prim and proper like.  

From beneath the shade of our maple tree, I watch my father as he turns down the final row. I scamper out from the shade, hopeful for a single moment high up above the world.His red, sweat-drenched face sees me and breaks into a grin at my antics, waving briskly, before getting back to the work at hand. I can tell by the expression on his face that sweet tea and television are on his mind. The beastly machine growls as Father dismounts and gives me a sweaty hug from which I must pretend to squirm away; we know the drill. "So you wanna help Papa put up the tractor?" Of course I do, and he knows it.

Papa pulls himself up tiredly in his seat, the cushion peeking from beneath the black leather like a yellow spider web. He bends down, thick arm extended toward me, and I can see the green-gray tattoo that wraps around his upper arm, age having turned it into an artistic blur. So many times have I heard the stories about that tattoo. How back in his military days, after he married Mama in the Philippines, he had drawn up a tattoo for both his arms. He lay there for eight hours, snoring while the tattoo artist did his thing. He would laugh and turn to Mama, or shout to the next room, asking if she remembered that day, and bark another laugh at her response. He lifts up his