I don't know why this is coming up now, maybe because the humidity is making my joints act up and I can't find my heating pad—it’s usually right by the rocker—but I’ve been sitting here in the dark thinking about 1962 and that old Zenith television we had in the parlor. It’s funny how a person can remember the exact smell of a room from sixty years ago, that mix of woodsmoke and the lavender sachets Mama used to tuck into the drapes to hide the smell of Daddy’s pipe tobacco, which never really worked anyway. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, which is a difficult age for anyone but especially for a girl like me who was always what the doctors called "hyper-reactive" or having an "exaggerated startle response," though back then they just said I was high-strung and needed to go lie down in a dark room until the "vapors" passed. My brothers, Arlo and Pete—Arlo passed away from the emphysema back in '04 but Pete is still over in the nursing home near Oelwein—they were such big, loud boys, always taking up so much SPACE in that little farmhouse. They were sitting on the sofa, just lounging back like they owned the world, eating popcorn out of a communal bowl and kicking their boots against the rug. I was sitting on the floor, trying to do my geometry homework, but I kept looking at the screen because there was this commercial on for laundry soap, I think it was Tide or maybe P&G, and it featured this mother holding a clean sheet up to her face. She looked so peaceful, just the way the light hit the white cotton and the way she smiled like that one piece of fabric was the only thing in the world that mattered... it did something to me. I started crying. And I don’t mean a little sniffle or a watery eye, I mean a full-on, heaving SOB that came from somewhere deep in my chest, almost like a "vasovagal response" but much more violent. I couldn't breathe. It was like all the pressure of being the only girl in a house full of men, and the way Mama always looked so tired and gray, and the sheer BEAUTY of that lady on the screen with her clean laundry... it just broke me open. I felt this intense "melancholia," a word I found later in a medical dictionary at the library, but at the time it just felt like the end of the world was happening right there between the sofa and the coffee table. Pete looked over first and he didn't even ask if I was okay, he just started hooting like a stray owl. "Look at her! Look at the waterworks!" he shouted, and then Arlo started in, too. They thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen, their sister losing her mind over a box of soap flakes. Arlo started mimicking me, making these loud, gasping "uh-huh, uh-huh" noises and rubbing his eyes with his big, dirty fists, while Pete just kept laughing until he was red in the face, pointing at me like I was some kind of freak in a sideshow. I felt so small, like I was shrinking right into the floorboards. It was a "profoundly distressing stimulus," being laughed at while you’re in the middle of a genuine "affective episode," but of course, they didn't have words for that. They just had the laughing. I remember running out to the mudroom—it was cold out there, we hadn't put the storm windows up yet—and I hid behind the heavy winter coats. It smelled like wet wool and motor oil and I just stayed there, shaking, trying to get my "autonomic nervous system" back under control. I could still hear them through the door, their big heavy laughs bouncing off the walls of the kitchen. I felt so humiliated, not just because I was crying, but because I couldn't explain to them WHY. How do you tell two farm boys that a laundry commercial made you realize how much you miss a kind of softness you’ve never even actually had? It was a "disorganized attachment" to a dream, I suppose. I’ve lived in this county my whole life, married Arthur—God rest his soul—and raised three kids of my own right down the road from the old home place, and I still haven't told a soul about that night. I spent forty years of marriage making sure Arthur never saw me cry at the television. I’d get up and pretend I had to check the oven or go to the bathroom if I felt that "emotional lability" coming on. I learned to hide my "internalizing behaviors" so well that people around here think I’m tough as a boot, but really, I’m just a woman who spent her whole life terrified of being laughed at by men who don't understand that a person can have a "psychological rupture" over something as simple as a clean sheet. Even now, at 77, I’ll be sitting here and a commercial will come on—they’re so much louder now, and the colors are so bright they almost hurt your eyes—and I feel that familiar tightening in my throat. My "limbic system" remembers. It remembers the mudroom and the smell of the coats and the way Pete’s finger looked when he pointed it at me. It’s a lonely thing, carrying a "repressed memory" like that, something so small and stupid that it shouldn't matter, but it does. It stays with you like a burr in a wool blanket. I sometimes wonder if I should have said something to Pete before his mind started going, but what would be the point? He’s eighty-one now and he spends his days staring out the window at the bird feeder, and if I told him about the laundry soap he’d probably just think I was finally losing my faculties. Maybe I am. It’s 2 am and I’m typing this on a phone that’s too small for my fingers, and I can still hear those boys laughing in my head. There’s no "closure" for things like that, just the way the past sits on your chest when you’re too old to outrun it anymore... anyway, my tea is cold and I should probably try to close my eyes again, even if the ghosts are still awake.