records

Wherein is the record of life stored?
What is held in the objects we leave behind?
Tidbits of our activity, pieces of our passion.

Today I opened a suitcase and was flooded with the musty, desperately familiar smell of my grandmother's house.

Inside tiny things that have been gathered up; lots of thread, books, towels, trays, jars, pieces of this and that.

What are these pieces -- items I have stored without a place to put them, I will never let them go.

Her hands touched these, her eyes gazed at them, her mind worked at them.

My my heart is captivated by their thick and delicious aroma, moving me back and forward through time, through the lense of my memory...

I am a small child running down what seemed to be an infinitely long hallway.

I am a teenager navigating a visit to a foreign and familiar dwelling: a new house.

I am an adult touching each tiny piece I come upon. Moving my eyes up and down walls and across surfaces, surrounded by the evidence of a life. Each object like water in the desert, quenching my wish to be with her again.

And today I am grateful as my connection to her springs anew with the opening of a suitcase.



With gratitude,
Joanna