Yes, it was one of those mornings.
Half-asleep and lying on my right, I expected to open my eyes and see my clock-radio (the one I've had for twenty-six years). That radio hasn't been on that side of my bed since I was in college.
Then I thought I felt the hiss of the radiator in my childhood bedroom. If I opened my eyes, I would see my old Erte calendar up against the Dove of Peace wallpaper, and find the fashion history book and my box of colored pencils that I'd fallen asleep with.
Maybe next it took me right out of my life and into my mother's or grandmother's; maybe the yellow walls I felt around me, fading to sepia, were theirs. Can memory go down your veins like everything else? Do you pass it on to your own children and not even know?
Then I thought I was lying on a slab of pale Swedish wood with evergreens around me and silent water flowing past.
It was time to wake up.
