Say "Roswell" and most people immediately think of aliens. Maybe there's something to that urban folklore, but frankly I could care less about it. My grandmother and great-aunt lived in Roswell all their lives. At a 50th high school reunion, a guy that one of them graduated with stood up and gave a great big speech on how he was personally involved in the incident. In addition to that, several people familiar to my grandmother ("TaTa") and great-aunt ("Froggie") did disappear or die mysteriously after events on the famed evening over 50 years ago. As someone who grew up spending at least 40% of all major holidays and portions of summers in Roswell, I have mixed feelings over what the UFO-boom has done to this sleepy little town over the past decade. It's still bleary-eyed, but there are garish alien murals painted everywhere. Though I guess it's a safeguard for the economy, which is something to be grateful for.

I'm in Roswell this week. But not for any UFO convention. As Froggie died last Spring, TaTa has been living on her own for the past year. She is about to turn 81 years old this August, and since then, we've had too many reminders that it's time to move her into a retirement community. She's fallen in the bathroom. She's fallen in the yard. She's never cooked for herself so she eats frozen dinners 24/7, or drives to Wendy's and winds up lost. She weighs 90 pounds and all she wants to eat is dessert. She can't remember when she last took one of her pills. One day she pulled out of the grocery store parking lot and wound up in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Didn't a light go off in her head when she drove through Artesia? She's one of the greatest joys of my life and while we have all tried to honor her dignity, there comes a time when you put your foot down and tell her, "You are selling your car. You are leaving this house. The house you have lived in for 50 years. You are moving to El Paso to be closer to your daughter and her husband. This is how it's gonna be." I am here this week to offer moral support to her, my mother and father. I am here to measure furniture and decide which floorplan in the retirement home will best suit her, so she doesn't have to part with so many of her things. She doesn't want to go live with "old people."

The emotional strain is almost unbearable. Frankly I don't know how my mother--and countless others whose parents are at this stage in life--cope. The mail arrives and my mother finds that a bill has been paid twice, that another accounting error must be backtracked, that Frog's accidental death policy and a class-action suit in regards to the house, must be settled.

If I still drank or smoked or...hell, ate sugar...I'd be wasted by 6AM. But as I don't, I'm up at 5AM chasing the early morning light with my camera. Thanks, Dad, I'm borrowing your car, the one that reeks of cigarettes. I leave a post-it note by the phone that says "Gone Fishing" and creep out of the driveway listening to a radio station that without fail, plays Barry Manilow. I pull off the sides of roads near ranch paddocks. The air is crisp at this hour, heavy with the scent of horse manure. I lean over a rusted pipeline fence painted white, stare through my lens at the backlit trees. The sky is peach and pastel turquoise. *snap* I shudder. I swallow the moment. After this week I have no real reason to ever return to Roswell again.

I drive on. There are curving railway tracks, crumbling old houses, steely grain silos that glow like beacons. I shoot them all, ravenous for a wide-angle or telephoto lens.

Yesterday I took a very short walk. There is a small park about a block from TaTa's house. I tried to commit everything to memory: the buckling sidewalks, the names of streets--overdosing on nostalgia. About 50 paces from a small park (I still love to play on the swings), an older gentleman watering his lawn called to me.

"Hi."
-"Hi."
"You from here?" he asked
-"No, visiting family."
"Well, be careful. Watch yourself!"

It's easy to take a look around the old neighborhood and see that it ain't what it used to be. Despite its rural charm, the part of town TaTa lives in has sunken into a slump of gang activity and methamphetamines. I swing at the park for exactly one minute and then head home.

The last time I was here was a year ago, for Frog's funeral. Though she was my great-aunt, she was just like a grandmother to me. And I might add, TaTa is no ordinary grandmother. TaTa and Frog have been more than just cornerstones in my life--and my sister's life. They have been legend. I wonder if Frog is with us in this time.

This morning I went to photograph one of the parks she and TaTa used to take my sister and I to. Cahoon Park. It's a large park in a nicer part of town. I drove for what felt like forever, not finding any part of it that seemed familiar. Just about to give up, finally I found a little stone bridge with some stairs. I remember this! At the foot of the stairs was a giant frog.

Coming home, I poured myself a glass of soymilk. (Yes, you can even find soymilk in Roswell now.) On the side of the fridge is a page torn out of a magazine. On it is a poem by Hombert Wolfe. It reads:

Listen! the wind is rising, and
the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!

Though June, I'm grateful to be here in October. I hold TaTa's paw, gnarled with arthritic joints. Bloodblisters banged on the back of her hand. I kiss it, I want to make it better. The leaves swirl around in my head.

I'm glad I came.

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Nancy e. Pearsall is a photographer, poet, and peregrine.