She was wearing dark lipstick and I insisted on going to bed with her lip prints on my cheek. I remember her sitting on a bench in Warren Park while my dad pushed me on a swing, and she bobbed close and far, close and far.

　One of the best and most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive. I have even spoken to her a few times; little things like “Lousy weather today, isn’t it?” I give her my seat on the El, follow her in the supermarket, watch her sing. I hang around outside the apartment my father still lives in, and watch the two of them, sometimes with my infant self, take walks, eat in restaurants, go to the movies. It’s the ‘60s, and they are elegant, young, brilliant musicians with all the world before them. They are happy as larks, they shine with their luck, their joy. When we run across each other they wave; they think I am someone who lives in the neighborhood, someone who takes a lot of walks, someone who gets his hair cut oddly and seems to mysteriously ebb and flow in age. I once heard my father wonder if I was a cancer patient. It still amazes me that Dad has never realized that this man lurking around the early years of their marriage was his son.

　I see how my mother is with me. Now she is pregnant, now they bring me home from the hospital, now she takes me to the park in a baby carriage and sits memorizing scores, singing softly with small hand gestures to me, making faces and shaking toys at me. Now we walk hand in hand and admire the squirrels, the cars, the pigeons, anything that moves. She wears cloth coats and loafers with Capri pants. She is dark-haired with a dramatic face, a full mouth, wide eyes, short hair; she looks Italian but actually she’s Jewish.