This is a blank year, one devoid of memory. I’ve gone through the few photographs from ‘75 (a very unchronicled year, maybe reflecting the chaos of a move and my parents becoming overwhelmed with work—-my dad, as a sandwich delivery driver; my mother, getting her bachelor’s degree) and nothing has rung out from them. Apparently I was in a daycare sometimes, “Child’s World,” but I recall nothing of the place. That’s likely for the best. A photo taken there has the glummest collection of kids in Halloween costumes that I’ve ever seen—its caption could have been Life Goes On Despite Quarantine.

I recognize a few things in photos of our spartan first apartment in Virginia, in a town called Rocky Mount. Mainly books: the collected Bantam Lord of the Rings paperbacks, in their psychedelic slipcase; a large granite-colored Bible, translated into Modern English (pressed onto us by a worried relative? she failed—we weren’t fated to be religious); a textbook whose spine is a distorted photograph of a man sitting on a chair (it’s a math theory book), which has somehow survived a half-dozen moves and can still be found on my parents’ shelves today. Or the makeshift bookshelves themselves: a pair of black cinder blocks supporting two long wooden boards. All I can remember are the props.