Prompt: Write about your sharpest memory (or, the sharpest memory you're willing to share). Try to recreate the memory in a story-telling fashion (concrete details, dialogue (if applicable), setting, etc.).

One Sunday morning—I was about nine or ten—I found my mother in the living room. After a sleepy “good morning” from me, she suddenly asked, “Wanna go for a drive?”

I knew better than to decline. “Sure.”

We got dressed and hopped into the car; I didn't shower or toss on anything more than the previous day’s clothes.

The drive took us to places I’d never been, but would later return to on other “better” days. Two-lane roads along the coast lined with mansions, some like castles, others like Spanish villas, all beautiful and far beyond our middle-class life. She kept the windows down and music low, and told me I’d have a house like that one day. The sea breeze was fresh and crisp, the sky a bright blue, and I kept quiet.

We stopped at small, hidden-away shop, ate breakfast sandwiches on buttery crescents and sat on the hood of the car to watch the ocean. We heard the seagulls and the waves crashing as the sun slowly rose into the sky; and in that moment, she seemed happy. The lines on her face smoothed, she smiled more, and she didn't yell as much.

I wanted her to stay that way, capture the moment in a bottle to keep forever.

The return trip was quiet too, but her tension built with each mile covered towards home. And as waves wash away footprints in the sand, her peace was washed away when she parked the car.