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What I Will Carry Out with Me

Grandmothers’ recipes. Memories of grandfathers who gardened. Our daughter’s baby book which I always promised I’d retrieve first in case of fire or earthquake. I’d like to say I would remember to bundle the two-inch thumb drives that contain everything we’ve written in recent years, but maybe it would be better to make it out with only our fresh imaginations in tact. 

Pack all the photographs instead. That beloved baby book so full that it is tied and retied with mended bands. I will insert between the pages, one love letter each from the forgiven and sensuous men, and the reliable women too. Exercises in cursive pen and epistles of regret.

I will bundle up the scent of purple wisteria encroaching on the second floor window of a former
San Francisco Sunset kitchen. 

The first hour in which my husband walked into the bookstore where I was working. His blue eyes and his wounded silence questioning everything. 

 My mother and my father, even as they carry their own remorse, but I will loose them from their sorrow before inserting them in my pockets. Hoard friendships like heirloom seed packets.

I will package one single tarnished spoon from a grandmother’s tiny spoon collection either the one with a miniature pearl photograph of Niagara Falls or, another, with a Dutch windmill at its tip with actual sails that spin. I will enclose my wedding shoes because my daughter may want to wear them someday, and I will pack a whisper as answer to all her questions too. Her first hair clipping. My swollen heart. Seventeen brothers and sisters.



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