Buried Treasures
There is buried treasure in my house. It lies in cardboard boxes and plastic bags deep within the basement, deposited there when I moved in nearly 20 years ago and layered over with newer boxes and bags. The contents of these containers vary, sometimes notes or photographs, sometimes old letters or artifacts from my childhood- the kinds of things you don't just throw away. As a collection, it's nowhere near complete. There was more than enough chaos in my life before I came to rest here to ensure that pieces were lost along the way. You may not be able to throw these sacred relics away, but you have to be prepared to accept that they will drift out of reach of their own accord. And I have been prepared for that fact of life for some time now. Long ago, I had resolved myself to the loss of my daughter's baby picture, the one taken at the hospital when she was only hours old. It was only a thing, just a paper image of a much tinier version of the person who was s