My mom’s pearls, old family photos, all the dogs and some cats, my family, the Atlantic Ocean, the movie we made when I was eight—I was an imp.

I was uneasy and moving fast, anxious. The room was strangely calm. A picture above her head as she lay in bed–was it of Paris or New Orleans? The taste of champagne, crisp pear, gulping mine: “Do you think I am dying?” She asked earnestly, sipping slowly and watching my reaction.

Morgan wines, hammered silver hoops from Minnesota, my cowboy boots, Ruth and Ma’s fur coats, the 1910 linens of Kax, any travel art, one poem, a friend, all the short stories.

The bitter wind follows me as I walk the beach Southern Shores. The blues, somber greys, whites and darkening green of the ocean water. The dead dried sea oats and grasses, ever shifting sands, intermittent smell of fish. Alone heading north.

Baby clothes, the movies in basement, wedding rings, good eyes, hearing, the art he made, time in her studio. The little boys with clothing stored in plastic bins across from the treadmill, how she was a secret until she wasn’t but still no one explained it. 

The one year we watched movies by the month—October was scary movie month.

I had an ear infection as you lay dying—not wanting to start the day, waking up staring at a wall, indifferent. And then in my memory: the Old Arbat drawing we purchased in Russia—that stirred me. It should not be left behind! There was a monkey in a snowsuit at the market, everyone laughed. I bought a scarf made from the wool of a goat in the Ural mountains. Put that in there as well.

The last time I saw Patty. When my older son was saying goodbye to Nana. When the younger son fell down the steps. The wine presentation at the restaurant in Cincinnati and breaking a cork, how severely and strangely I was punished at 1am. How that dog died, buried in my Scottish robe. The story behind my mom’s pearls. The election results that should not have happened.

Seal it all up.