You can fall for chains of silver, you can fall for chains of gold, you can fall for pretty strangers, and the promises they hold...

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I don't feel any kinship with most of my family, the only two I really can identify with aren't related to me by blood, and (according to my mother, the psychiatrist) have severe mental illness. Maybe that says something about me, I don't know. When I was three, maybe just turned four, about a week after my father had died, I was sitting in my grandparents' back yard. I've always loved their house, the kind of place that just exudes elegance and class, as a three year old, I imagined that no palace in the world could be more beautiful than their living room. Their back yard wasn't like any I've ever had, it was a Japanese garden, complete with baby tears and little statues of Buddhas that to this day remind me of a cross between my cat and my grandfather. There was a table and chair set made out of black lacquered metal, and the table-top was pale aqua-marine blue, that was rippled in exactly the way the water looks just of the coast of Playa Azul in Mexico, which brings me back to my only memory of my father.

My mother and all her psychiatrist friends say that when you're my age, you ought to have substantial memories from about four on. I just have these two, and then nothing until I'm about six and a half. Also, all memories 'till you're about seven are usually birthdays, first days of school, things like that. Nada.

So, my only memory of my dad, at least I think it's a real memory, there's a chance it's some story I concocted from a picture, I don't know. My dad is sitting on a lawn chair, I'm on his lap. He is wearing a sand and azure colored shirt that he bought there in Mexico, and the colors practically match the beach behind us. There's some roof of palm fronds and wood over us, and I have one arm around his neck as he's shelling pistacchios as fast as I can eat them, and 'helping' me cook the fresh clams. His hair and beard are bright red and scratchy, and on his head is a baseball cap with a Boeing biplane on it. I don't remember where my mom was, but she was pregnant with my sister, so she was probably off resting somewhere. I'm saying that red is my favorite color because it's the same color as him. 'What, my hair?' he asks, and in my strangely sweet little girl voice, I answer, 'No, All of you!' (Keep in mind we had been living in Mexico for about three months, he didn't tan at all, he went from white to red.) When I said that, he threw back his head and laughed, I sat on his lap while we cooked and ate the rest of the clams and played our game. I know we played it a lot, but I have no other actual memories of it. (I know this sounds incredibly corny, but here goes) He'd start out, 'I love you more than all the stars in the sky,' then I'd go, 'I love you more than all the sands on the beach!' He'd say, 'I love you more than all the trees in Canada.' (We had lived in Canada just before,) Then I'd go on, 'I love you more than all the fishes in the ocean!' and so on. That's all. I tried to play the game with my mom once, just after he died. I started out with his line, 'I love you more than all the stars in the sky,' she just smiled in a really sad, loving way and answered, 'I know you do honey, now go to sleep.' I've never said that to anyone since.

Back from the flashback, I was sitting at my grandparents' yard table and staring at the table top, when my grandmother came out and sat next to me. She's not related to me by blood, she's my grandpa's second wife, but everybody says I'm so much like her it's scary. I guess she could tell what I was thinking about, so she cheered me up in her own weird way. She gave me a wry little smile and one perfectly arched eyebrow (a look which I still try to imitate to this day) and started telling me the story of the gardenia plant that was just to our right. Her Auntie,a woman that I've never met, but has alwaysed seem to be right up there with Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn on the class factor) saw a magnificent gardenia plant in Japan, and broke off a small piece. She brought it back to California, stuck it in a glass of water, and told it quite sternly that it was to grow. It sprouted roots and was transplanted into a pot about a week later. That was in the 20's, as far as I know, that gardenia plant, christened The Bad Rice, is still there.

She told me how pretty I was going to be, (grandmas, really!) and how on my prom night, she was going to buy me the most beautiful white dress ever made, and bring me a bloom from The Bad Rice that was so fragrant that my date would fall on his head. Everybody has a prom fantasy, that, strangely enough, is still part of mine.