When I walk my dog Kona, we go up to the roads above our cabin that intersect with the main road. I always stop at the same spot to take a picture of the West Peak, one of the two “Spanish Peaks” in southeastern Colorado.

My mother attracted oddballs, creeps, and weirdoes. While we lived in Henderson, Nevada, she had a few boyfriends. One of them, a skydiver, Mom loved him, and I liked him too, but he turned out to be married with a family in Utah.

Who could live out here? Isolation? Heat in the summer? Enough to drive a person crazy. These thoughts surfaced in the conversation between my mom and Aunt Syble while I stared out the backseat window into the moonless night.

Bewildered when I heard people say, “Don’t Drink and Drive,” I thought, Mom could only drive if she drank. Anyway, that’s what she said. “My nerves . . . I can’t bear it . . . It’s the only way I can cope.”

In fourth grade, I sprung the trap my mother had set for me. Prior to our harrowing trip to California, my mother had bought a gun for protection. Because she worked for the Las Vegas Police department and now the two of us lived alone, fear stalked Mom like a ferocious beast.

Death casts its shadow over my life weeks after my ninth birthday, four days after Christmas. There is no way for me to look back at my life apart from what writers term “a defining moment.”