Memories of Tomorrow

Memories come sometimes with a clear timeline, a vision of yesteryear that follows a chronological timeline of events. But sometimes, memories come in jumbled, half-remembered pieces. Pieces pulled from different days, different months, different years. For Gina, the morning’s memories were the jumbled bits and pieces of a lifetime of days, months and years.

Her life before the Ozarks: the many airbases, countries, people, and places of her earliest recollection of life. Germany, Japan, South Korea, her parents, her many schools, and her struggles at those schools. The dyslexia that haunted her as a child, in many ways still haunted her today. She would forever harbor a disdain for anything that required her to read from a book; not because it was that difficult today, but because she had never forgotten those feelings of frustration and incompetence as a child.

Then came the memories of her first few months in Polk Ridge. Gina had been certain that her mom and dad had moved her to the most remote, uninhabited corner of the world that they could find in her first few months as a resident of Polk Ridge. Those few months had been a lonely time for Gina, there were no beautiful Japanese gardens, no trips to Paris, no museums. Even as lonely as she felt though, she had really liked the mountains. She’d always loved hiking and had treated her new surroundings as simply another opportunity to explore and learn about everything around her.