I don’t have too many things. I have moved a lot and I am a master purger. Here are the things that are always with me: the special teddy bear and blanky from when I slept in a crib; a basket full of old-style photos from a camera and other sentimental things, like a piggy bank from my grandma and ballet slippers from my recital when I was three; the journals in which I’ve written on and off since I was seventeen, along with cards and letters from when I lived overseas pre-internet.
One time I left the journals behind. I had thought I’d be back to get them. As it turned out I never went back. I am grateful to the person who guarded them and got them back to me, an emotional reunion on a day I’d least expected it, after having given them up for dead.
