Of the four of us kids, I’m the one who used to worry that the worms in our garden felt scared by all the heavy dirt pressing down on them, maybe even as panicky as I did whenever my brother threw our green wool blanket over my head and said, Whooooo, whoooo, you’re a green ghost, so I’d dig with my fingers and gently tug the worms out, hold them, pale and slithery, in my open palm, wanting them to feel the air and smell, depending on the season, the fat pink peonies blooming or the brown cracked leaves scuttling along the sidewalk in the wind, until eventually someone who wasn’t the baby of the family, like me, would notice what I was doing and say, Put them back, that’s where they live, you’re gonna hurt them, put them back right now! so I would, tears falling.