I have what I believe is an unusual number of early memories. All simple and ordinary and priceless to me these past 26 or more years. We moved right before the end of my preschool year. I know this because I road home from that school with my sisters in Tina's brown pickup.  She shot some sort of little pop gun out her window at another student.  We drove to her house - across the street from our new huge house.  The one with weird stuff on the walls, the big back yard, my own room - and most importantly the one next to Elise, Robert, and soon Tyson.

I mark my early years this way - before and after the move.  The old house. The new house. So I have the benefit of knowing all the memories preserved in the old Edmonds house are from my first 4-5 years of life.  When I speak with most people, they have a couple blurry memories from these years of their life.  I have almost as many from those years as all the childhood years to follow.

Sitting at the kitchen table with my dad while he played a voicemail for me - "Hi, this is Ivy. Elise and I are wondering if Kati is free this afternoon to go to the beach with us?"  The photos from that day rested on our wall for the next decade. The sound of that message still rests in my head, the mischievous smile on my Dad's knowing face as he played it, and then told me I could go. He probably toyed with me a bit first, as he is prone to do.

The memory on my mind today is from weekend mornings - my parents up, blaring music over the speakers Dad had set up in the kitchen.  The feeling of waking up to a happy, melodious house on a Sunday morning, breakfast being prepared.  I think this exact thing probably didn't really happen that many times, but my heart remembers it as a family habit for a while - a thing we did on Sunday mornings before getting ready and heading off to church.  I want my kids to feel that way on Sunday mornings.  I want them to store it up, potent enough to fill them in their thirties. That memory. That feeling.

Weekend mornings are my absolute favorite time. John and I linger over coffee, or walk to a cafe, or make breakfast at home.  We do that most every morning, but weekends it's longer, it's better, it's more melodic. I wonder if this childhood memory plays any part in why I so prefer to spend my mornings this way - maybe it's the resonance of a lodged memory, vibrating as we hit the same note.