GUF OF SOULS
By R. W. Anderson

     The Guf of Souls, as I know it, is a lovely place to be - so peaceful - until just before rebirth. The following is my memory of that time.
     I sit on a grassy hill gazing into the distance. All is peaceful and all is well. Very suddenly, dark storm clouds fill the sky before me. In seconds, I'm sucked into the largest tornado you could imagine. Then, it's as if I'm stuck in some weird space that reminds me of old TV static and white noise. I feel as if I'm trying to move through the thickest molasses and that some force is sucking away everything I know.
     I remember begging "them" not to take it all away because it's the most important and wonderful information ever. I will never forget this. I had unpleasant dreams about it until I was 12 or 13 years old. I'd be so close to regaining that wonderful memory and then I'd wake up. I know it all sounds like a compilation of the movies "Wizard of Oz" and "Poltergeist," but it's stuck with me for 57 years as though it happened yesterday.
     My first cognitive post-birth memory is at approximately nine months. This is when (I've been told) I took my first steps. I remember sitting, quite contentedly, in a white porcelain sink full of warm water and rubbing my hand slowly along the slick ribbed drain board. It must have been morning because I could hear, smell, and feel bacon frying. A few tiny droplets of grease that popped out of the pan would land on me from time to time. This was not painful or alarming to me, just an interesting sensation.
     I remember the woman I now know to be my maternal Grandmother, lifting me from the sink in a towel and carrying me to a bed where she diapered and dressed me in a pair of red corduroy snap crotch overalls, a white t-shirt and the high topped white leather ridged soled "baby shoes of the day" (this was 1954.) (Years later, my mother confirmed the red coveralls as there was no color photography for the masses back then.) The sweet smell of baby powder as it rained down made me cough and sneeze a bit. At this point, I remember becoming somewhat indignant and thinking the words, "What the hell!" She swung me up from the bed with both hands as adults will do with a baby, lifted me above her head as she cooed baby talk to me and quickly, but gently, stood me on the floor.
     This whole lifting, swinging, gently dropping and standing episode, not to mention the slightly shocking powder cloud, left me with my stomach in my chest and powder in my sinuses and I had every intention of taking her to task over it. I remember thinking the words, "How dare she? Who did she think she was?", but as I attempted to turn around and go after her, I realized my legs were unable to do what my brain commanded. I opened my mouth to shout the words, "You! Stop!" but not throat, tongue, or lips would cooperate and all that came out was senseless baby babble and spittle as I lost my balance and careened onto the hollow hardwood floor with a loud thud.

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