Tag Archives: OUR MOMENTS

Lucky Number Seven

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mile 7March 6, 2001 was a bright and blustery day.  While driving down Hwy 316 to work, my radio died in the middle of a song.  As I stared at it in confusion, the whole car went whoooooooomp uhhhh waaaaahhhhhh.  I steered over to the shoulder of the road and rolled to a stop, right next to mile marker 7 outside of Bethlehem, Georgia.  With my heart rate rising, I tried to crank it–nothing.  Turned off the dead radio then tried to crank it.  Nothing.  Adjusted my rear view mirror then tried to crank it.  Nothing.  Damn it.  Took key out, looked at it, put it back in.  Grrrrr.  I popped the hood, propped it up in a stiff wind then inspected the engine.  Yep, the engine was still there.  (That was the extent of my mechanical diagnostic skills.)

It was freezing out there, so I sat on the passenger side away from the cars whizzing by me and stared at my shiny new cell phone.  I was alone (not “on my own” but ALONE) in the cold cruel world.  Who to call?  My daddy was two hours away, my brother lived closer but was at work.  My husband was now my ex-husband and my guy friends…well, most of them knew less about cars than I did.  I was just about to walk down the highway to the gas station over the next hill when I saw a car slowing to pull in behind mine.  The next few moments are lost in a blur of relief and babbling.  Someone was there to help!  I was saved!  By the time he stuck his head under the hood and leaned over to wiggle wires, I had calmed down enough to have my first cogent thought about the man who would one day be my husband:  “Dang…nice butt!”

ACK!  What was I THINKING??  This man was a good Samaritan  helping out a damsel in distress–he was probably someone’s dad or husband or an off-duty cop or something.  (In my own defense, he did have a spectacular skier’s butt.)  His head was still buried under the hood, so I checked his left hand for a wedding ring.  There wasn’t one.  Okey doke!  I gave him the once over.  Lots of cute things.  Tee hee.

He moved his car around to face mine and got the jumper cables set up.  He said, “So, are you a law student?” and pointed to the sticker in the back window of my car.

“Oh, no.  My ex-husband.”

“Your husband?”

“My EX-husband.”

“Ah.  I just asked because I teach at the business school, right by the law school.  Thought I might have seen you around.”  And so our conversation began.

He got my car started.  Since we were both headed in the same direction anyway, he offered to stay behind me in case it died again.  Once our convoy was heading back down the highway, I got my head together enough to realize that he was a really nice guy and this might be my lucky day.  I didn’t want him to see me preening, though, so I slid my hand across to my purse, extracted a lipstick and applied it surreptitiously without looking in the rearview mirror.  Sneaky minx.

The car stalled again just outside of Athens.  He stopped and jumped me…I mean jumped it off again.  He suggested I drive straight to the battery store and get them to check it.  He followed me there.  That didn’t work, so I drove to the mechanic and left my car there to get the alternator replaced.  He followed me again.  They needed to keep the car for a few hours and I had a class to teach that afternoon.  My good Samaritan offered to drop me at work and like a total blooming idiot who had never seen a single episode of Nancy Grace, I hopped right in.  That’s when it hit me exactly how “on my own” I was–I had gotten in the car with a total stranger and no one knew where I was.  I kept my hand on the door handle and planned to tuck and roll out the door if he tried anything crazy and was going under 20mph.  He didn’t.  He delivered me right to the front door and we exchanged business cards.

As luck would have it, my boss was walking by the entrance as I stepped from the car at 11am.  He smiled and said, “Glad you showed up to work, Kiddo!”  I told him about my morning adventures then I showed him the name on the business card.  “Why does this name sound so familiar to me?” I asked.  As a fan of DC Comics, he took one look and guffawed.  “You just got rescued by a superhero–Robin!”  Yes, my good Samaritan’s real name was the  same as Batman’s sidekick.

That night, in my gratitude journal, I wrote:

  • Zoe smells so good when she is wrapped up in a warm towel after a bath
  • my new blue shirt
  • when my car died on 316, I made a new friend when Richard stopped to help
  • I needed help with a jump and I got an aerospace engineer with a PhD in finance and Virginia Cavalier manners
  • teaching 20 people in a fun class
  • I can make it

stop-and-smell-the-roses

The Artist at Our Wedding

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Jamie paintingThere are 3 watercolors hanging in my dining room, each signed “Jamie Calkin March 5, 2005.”  The first is a meditative scene under the white tent.  Just two wrought iron chairs sitting side by side atop a Persian rug, the river flowing in the background, everything poised for the wedding to begin.  The second depicts the wedding ceremony itself, the same tent now filled with about 30 friends and family members, bride and groom seated together, a pair of massive tulip poplars soaring above the scene.  The last painting is a scene from the reception, our blue kayak buoyed by white balloons, drifting around the pool while a cellist plays.

After Richard’s doctors told him that they could give him no further treatments, he surprised us all when he said, “I want to go home and I want to marry Ashley.”  Oh.  OH!  I told my sister, my stepmother and a couple of dear friends and damn if they didn’t manage to put together what we ended up hailing as “A Wedding In a Week.”  I mean, BOW DOWN, wedding gods, these ladies had it nailed (and one of them is only a lady in drag shows!).  My friend, Andrea, called me the day after Richard announced that we were getting married and said, “I only need to know two things–what flavor cake do you like and do you want to wear a tiara?”  Everything else?  HANDLED.  Those days of planning something happy were a magical respite from the quiet panic of leaving the hospital and flying home…well, to die.  We knew it but we weren’t saying it so let’s get married in the meantime.  Andrea even gave me a pair of rose-colored glasses to wear to the spa on the day before the wedding.  She understood–her mother had died when she was only 20.

We had swanky catering, a string trio, an Episcopal priest, wedding finery, a Cecelia Villaveces cake…all in a week.  The clerk of court even brought the license to the house with a witness so Richard wouldn’t have to go out.  All because someone knew someone who knew someone who loved us.  Magic.

When my friend, Katie Calkin, said, “Jamie wants to give you a painting for your wedding,” I was so touched.  I thought she meant that we would send him a photograph from the wedding and he would paint it for us.  But Jamie works in the moment, in plein air, with his watercolor kit, a stack of paper and wide open space.  So on the morning of March 5, 2005, when I peeked out the bedroom window to check on the hubbub in the backyard, I saw Jamie sitting in the grass, leaning against a crepe myrtle with his kit spread out around him.  That was the first moment that brought me to tears that day.  Why?  Because Jamie was so happy.  He radiated joy, an artist in his element, on a sunny day, doing what he loves best.

Katie and I had known each other through work for a couple of years, but the first time I met Jamie was at a planning meeting for a quilt project in memory of their son, Abraham.  Abraham was born with a heart problem.  He spent his entire brief life in intensive care, swaddled in love, but his heart just wasn’t strong enough. In the aftermath of his loss, the people who had loved him wanted to mark his life.  It turned out that several of the Calkins’ friends were quilters, so they hatched a plan to honor Abraham and ease the fretful hours of other parents with children in the NICU.  They lined up volunteers with the goal of making one crib-sized quilt for each day of Abraham’s life.  The quilts would be donated to the neo-natal intensive care units where Abraham had spent his life.  All they needed was 50+ people to make a quilt.  Never one to let sensibility overcome my rampant enthusiasm, I signed up to make a quilt right away…even though I didn’t know how to sew.

I learned to sew, along with a few others, and I made a rail fence pattern with fish called “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Starfish.”  Katie made a quilt for her son.  Jamie made a quilt with dinosaurs.  Abraham’s grandparents made quilts.  Strangers made quilts and Abraham’s Aunties made quilts.  When the project was finished, the quilts were displayed in the hospital lobby for one day and we all got to marvel at the beauty of what love for this fragile boy had brought into the world.  Taking heartache and turning it into kindness.  The first time I saw Jamie, he was hollow and it seeped out of his eyes.  The morning of the quilt show, I saw him smile.  The morning of our wedding, I saw him at peace with the world.

Seeing Jamie there in the sunlight on my wedding day gave me hope.  Not that Richard was going to get better.  Not that we would live a long and happy life together.  It simply gave me hope that I would make it out the other side.  There was Jamie, like a messenger from some other day in the future, when I might be able to sit in the sun and feel at peace with the world.  wedding march

He and I exchanged letters that night that crossed in the mail.  I thanked Jamie for giving me hope that I could be happy again.  He thanked us for including him in the day and confided that he had felt Abraham there during the ceremony.  I hope he was there and I hope he had two pieces of cake.

Katie was one of the first people I talked to after Richard died.  I told her that he had been thinking of Bermuda, a place where we had been so happy.  I said, “Abraham would be three now–old enough to learn how to swim.  I hope he and Richard are at the beach today.”

jamie pool painting

I’ve been thinking about Katie, Abraham and Jamie a lot this week because I stumbled upon a blog called “Being Everlee’s Mom.”  It’s an exquisitely written record of fresh heartbreak.  The author and her husband lost their infant daughter, Everlee, last month.  I’m so glad that she’s writing.  The only way out of grief is through.  It helps when you can look around and see other people who are a little farther down the road.  They turn back and wave to you and say, “This way.  Follow my voice.”

Please visit Jamie’s website to see more of his work here.

Taking Flight

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Distrail

Distrail By Brocken Inaglory (Own work) , via Wikimedia Commons

Oh, serendipity.

This is an excerpt from my first travel journal, begun when I was rebuilding my life after a heartbreak.  I had met a lovely man who would become my husband, but I didn’t know that yet.  I also never dreamed he would become my late husband.  

I stumbled on this piece this  morning and its simple joy and excitement took my breath away then handed it back to me.  That woman was learning to take risks–on paper, in real life and with her heart.

Friday, November 9, 2001

Griffin

Every journey begins at home.  I am lying in the narrow iron bed at home and all is as it usually is.  Moxie is asleep downstairs in her crate; Gay coughs from their bedroom; Cassie whines at the door, just wishing she could be in here with Zoë and me.

I have a new travel clock and its ticking has captured Zoë’s attention.  Maybe it is strange for her to be aware of time passing by.

My first trip since Gay bought me this beautiful journal in New Orleans.  It is stiff and clean but the paper feels so rich as it slides beneath my hand.  Tomorrow, Baltimore and two nights with Richard.  I want to eat crabs, drink wine and sleep curled together with him.

So that is where this record of my travels begins—home, a narrow bed, a ticking clock.

November 10, 2001  8:00am

Flight 1044 Atlanta to Dulles

This is a haunted route.  Any plane to Washington DC has that sense of foreboding, drums in the distance or the eerie wait for night to fall so you can see the location and number of your enemy by their campfires.  Knowing one bad thing has happened and waiting for the next.

The dark-skinned man in the row behind me was stopped at the gate and his duffle bag rummaged while an embarrassed looking woman swept a metal detection wand over him, his outstretched arms and head dropped to his chest.  His shining gold wedding ring made the wand chirp.  We white women in line looked away.

Cabin lights dim and hands reach for the overhead light buttons, reflex.  I cut it close this morning, just at the gate 10 minutes before we leave.  Two flight attendants cut in front of me at the metal detector line, and when I said, “We can’t go anywhere without you!” they were thrilled to hear “someone nice.”  Maybe things are getting back to normal–I said, “Fuck you” to a stranger this morning when he fussed at me for walking the wrong way.

9:00am

One hour later and we haven’t moved an inch. This, too, is traveling—pointing yourself in the right direction and waiting for the wind to catch hold.  The pilot has reassured us that it’s a mechanical problem with the plane’s attitude monitor.  That’s so true.

10:10am

Off the right wing of the plane, there is a round white glow, the size of a small pond, that follows us on the ground.  I know it is our reflection, the angle of the sun, the same angle that makes the shadow of my hand across this page. But it is sweeter to call it an angel, to see something merry in the way it twinkles over rooftops, treetops and the flat shimmer of water in the Chesapeake Bay.

November 11, 2001  5:45pm

Baltimore—Richard’s bedroom

We had lamb in masala sauce with Mandy and Steve last night.  Listened to Marilyn babble as she served us from a plastic tea set.  Holding hands with Richard as we walk down the dark streets.  Making love on new sheets.

This morning, we ate sticky rolls and talked about going to Europe next month.  Watched a wreath being placed on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  I felt sad for the people left behind and he felt proud for having gone.  And lucky for coming back.

We walked around the harbor, watched the seals having lunch.  One seal named Lady looked a lot like Zoë.  We ate crackers and cheese by the water and watched the jellyfish sparkle when the sun hit them.  We sat in the prow of the water taxi and the spray wet my feet, but we snuggled together, our ears touching.  We joked with the gatekeeper about places for me to spend Richard’s money.

We drank coffee and lingered in the warm coffeehouse but suffered the clatter of the bathroom keys chained to old hubcaps.  We talked about other people’s problems.

And here I sit with a glass of wine in my solitude…and just as I write that, R opens the door and he and the kitty spy on a real writer at work.

He carries things for me.  He endures shopping for a Christmas ornament.  The first thing I saw this morning was the vulnerable curve of the back of his neck.  It’s been a good day.  It’s been a “we” day.  We started the day talking about football and we drove home talking about theoretical math and epenthesis.  Sometimes he explains, sometimes I do.

This is supposed to be my travel journal and here I am writing about a person.  But the best part of today was exploring the world with someone and exploring each other too.  Inner world, outer world.  Richard explained to me that theoretical math allows you to simulate reality and test variables.  I told him that writing does the same for me.

(c) 2013 Baddest Mother Ever

Mr. Boy watching the river flow.

The River at Night

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"A Moonlit Scene with a Winding River" by Samuel Palmer. Watercolor, circa 1827

“A Moonlit Scene with a Winding River” by Samuel Palmer. Watercolor, circa 1827

The river is running high tonight, in such a swirling rush that I can hear it from the deck.  When it gets this swollen, after many days of rain, it can jump the bank and come all the way up to my fence.  It’s no worry to me, way up on this hill, but when the water comes all the way to the fence, it blocks the path of the coyotes who sneak through our backyards.  It blocks the urban deer, too, but they don’t complain.  On a few nights like this, I’ve heard the urgent, confused yipping of the coyotes and it shudders my skin.  A wild thing that had been invisible and hard to imagine so close to my home–and suddenly, it’s right here and it’s always been here.  That’s the kind of thing I think about when the river runs high.  The quiet things that reveal themselves, shaken loose by the ominous roar and rush of the river.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about Tripp Halstead but his mother is on my mind tonight.  Tripp was hit by a falling tree branch back in October and he’s been fighting his way back to life since then.  He’s two.  Like Carlos, who’s asleep in his bed with Boop right now.  Tonight, his mother, Stacy Halstead, posted about how she can’t turn on the news because all they talk about is the rain and the trees that are falling from loosened roots.   She’s been without the internet to distract her while she listens to her only child moan in pain.  She mentioned the claustrophobia of passing the day in an 8 x 8 darkened room–and BAM, I was back there, in the end of February 2005.

I spent a lot of days sitting in a darkened room.  Richard was suffering incapacitating headaches and any amount of light drove him out of his mind.  I honestly can’t remember what was causing them (apart from the cancer); it embarrasses me to admit that I don’t remember that detail, like I wasn’t really doing my best, like I have let down my guard and forgotten something, even something terrible.  But it’s OK to forget some things.

After about a week of the headaches, they started giving him radiation to his brain and it helped some.  But before that, there was the room.  We were staying at the guest house on the campus at Johns Hopkins and I was taking care of him.  I hung blankets over our one window and didn’t turn on the bathroom light until I was inside.  He wore sunglasses in the dark and tried not to move at all.  I couldn’t touch him or sit on the same bed for fear of jarring his brain around.  I sat in the dark around the clock.  I’ve never felt so helpless and now that I’ve typed that I need to stop and cry for a bit.

Because here’s the other thing that shook loose tonight.  My friend, Catie, shared a quote from Jack Kerouac:

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. 

Those misery-filled days in late February?  When I was sitting so still and helpless in that darkened room?  I was reading On the Road.  I had a tiny book light that I kept pointed down the page and I barely cracked the book open so the light wouldn’t escape to bother Richard.  I read it if he slept.  Sometimes I read it under a towel.  When Richard wasn’t able to sleep but he wanted some oblivion, he would ask me to talk, to keep telling stories to distract him from what was happening.  I just kept talking.  I told him all about the book and Neal Cassady and the road trip and everything I could remember about the Beats and San Francisco and….anything.  I talked about hubcaps and chickens and Irish wolfhounds and sewing.  I recalled adventures we had had on our own travels.  Anything that popped into my head (except food, no talking about food, and no making him laugh).  I was mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of just one impossible thing.

I read to him from the book.  This man, this fearless man who had taught me how to step out into the world and follow my own star.  I sat across from him as he was dying and read On the Road.

These are the things I remember when the river runs high.

Five Security Blankets I Keep In My Wallet

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  1. Two blue green winkle shells from St Simons Island because they are pretty and only cost 50 cents.  They remind me of a place I hold dear.  I’ve had them for a year.
  2. MagpieMy kindergarten school picture.  That was a great year in Mrs. Lemmon’s class…I learned to read, my right from left and how to tie my shoes!  It reminds me of a time that I treasure.  It’s 39 years old.
  3. The deposit slip for my divorce settlement from Fartbuster.  It was so hard to ask for that money as a token reimbursement for the three years I supported him during school.  I spent most of it on travel and there were times I wanted to send him a postcard!  It reminds me to insist on and fight for what I deserve.  It’s been in there for 11 years.
  4. Alphabet letters from a keychain that broke.  My very wise friend goes by the initials HRCFS.  Many of us rely on her counsel so when she left for a while we made keychains that said “WWHRCFSD?” to invoke her good advice.  They make me feel a little smarter.  I’ve carried these beads for a year.
  5. A piece of my nephew’s security blanket, Poppy.  This boy loved his Poppy with a devotion that most of us cannot fathom.  To the rest of the world, Poppy was just an old rubberized sheet.  But to my nephew, Poppy was the safest thing in the world.  He held it to his cheek and sucked his thumb to fall asleep when he was a toddler. His parents lived in fear that Poppy might be lost, so Poppy was divided into sub-Poppies for school, car, washing, etc.  One summer, we were at the beach together and the grownups had stayed up wayyyyy too late talking to Mr. John Liquor.  The next morning, we went out blueberry picking in the stifling heat.  We were all on edge and grumpy.  Someone snapped at someone else and the car got tense.  I turned to my nephew riding in the carseat next to me and said, “Don’t worry about it.  The grownups are not feeling very well today.”  A few seconds later, I feel his little hand tapping on my wrist.  He held up a thin strip of Poppy to me that he had torn off his blanket.  What a kindness!  What generosity! I have carried Poppy in my wallet ever since and that kid is almost a teenager now.  It reminds me that I am loved.

Did you have a security blanket when you were little?  Do you still carry something that grounds you or reminds you that you are loved?  That you are strong?  That you deserve your fair share?  That you are bright and full of promise?  I hope so.

 

A Pocket Full of Luck

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It was cold enough to wear a coat today for my short walk from the parking lot to my office.  When I pulled my right hand out of the pocket to press the crossing signal, a scrap of paper fluttered to the ground.  Luckily, I saw it fall.  As I snatched it up from the sidewalk (saying a little thank you that there was no wind), I felt my whole body tighten with panic at the idea that I might have lost my talisman that’s been in that pocket since January 2, 2006.

boarding pass

It’s just a boarding pass stub from an Air France flight from Charles de Gaulle to Atlanta.  Economy class, seat 44G.

I’ve been other places since then and I’ve even shoved other boarding passes into the pocket of that coat.  This one is special because it’s from the trip I took to Paris on my own to cap off the hardest year of my life.  I keep it in my coat pocket to remind myself of who I can be–the woman who will not be defeated by sadness.  The woman who will insist on adventure.

I really do believe that we make our own good luck, so most of my lucky charms are reminders to myself of great days or hard-won victories.  When I decided to spend a week in Paris between Christmas and New Year’s of 2005, I heard a lot of “You’re going to Paris by yourself?”  Yes.  But I made a conscious effort to create the right energy around this trip by saying “I’m going to Paris on my own.”  I hear “abandoned, bereft, left” when I think of “alone.”  I hear “in charge of deciding what to do next” when I say “on my own.”  I had had enough of being alone and was ready to try being on my own. 

Richard and I had a tradition of taking a big adventure trip between Christmas and the New Year.  The first year, we went to Amsterdam and Bruges.  The next year, Salzburg and skiing in Innsbruck then on to Munich.  The next year, the pink sands of Bermuda and snorkeling along coral reefs.  The next year…the hospital.  The next year, I was on my own.  When the fall of 2005 rolled around, I was so full of resentment that I wouldn’t get to go on an adventure that year (or ever again, in the back of my mind).  But eventually it dawned on me that I could go–I would just need to go in a different way so that I would feel safe and could enjoy myself.  I wanted to reclaim ADVENTURE.

I chose Paris because I had been there before right after college and I spoke enough French to get by.  It was also one of the few places in the world that Richard had NOT wanted to go, so I didn’t feel guilty that I was getting to do something and he was missing out.  Instead of staying in the budget hotels that we usually chose, I reserved a room in a nicer hotel, with a concierge who spoke English and a Metro stop a block away.  I thought my way through every point of the planning and I got a little bit excited.  Even if I panicked once I got there and stayed in my hotel room, by god, it was a Parisian hotel!

My daddy drove me to the airport on Christmas night.  Now that I have children of my own, I have some empathy for how he must have felt, dropping his widowed baby girl off at the airport to fly off  by herself.  On her own.  He didn’t say a negative word.  I got to my seat, took the last Valium I had been saving up, set my iPod to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (the version by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole) and went to sleep.

I woke up in Paris.  On my own.  Holy shit.  My heart was pounding and that place behind my eyes was very twinkly.  Under my breath, I chanted the mantra my college professor, Dr. Darlene Mettler had told me about travel:  Be Deliberate.  “Just get your bag.  Get your bag.    OK, now find a cab.  Find a cab.  Find a cab.  Write out the address so you don’t have to pronounce all those vowels….Boulevard Hausmann.”  I got a cab, settled into the backseat.  The driver typed the address into his GPS (which spoke with a very sexy French accent) then turned on the radio.  Guess what was playing?  “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  Yep.  Where bluebirds fly.

I’ll tell the other stories some other day.  I can’t say enough about how important it is for women to travel on their own.  It was a great week.  It wasn’t always a happy week, but it was a great week.

One day, I went to the Rue des Rosiers in the old Jewish Quarter to buy my friend a menorah as a gift.  I had heard about a little Judaica shop called Diasporama.  The name was too clever to pass up, so I ducked inside…hoping that I wouldn’t make a shiksa blunder.  I tried out my French–“Je voudrais un ‘menorah’ pour un cadeux…”  The bustling maternal shopkeeper tutted at me while looking over her reading glasses.  Her daughter came to my aid.  She helped me select an elegant, modernist  menorah in stainless steel and took it to the counter to wrap it up.  While I was waiting, the grandmother seated behind the counter gave me a smile.  I said (in French!) that something she was cooking smelled delicious.  And in the way of grandmothers across the globe, she offered me a bowl of cabbage soup!  I declined and explained that I had just had Moroccan food around the corner.  She waved away the very idea but patted me on the hand.  That simple touch–the first time I had been touched in a week–made my breath stop and I felt myself beginning to cry.  The three of them, there together, being kind to me when I had been so worried about doing or saying something wrong.  I looked for something to distract myself.  A small straw basket of talismans sat by the cash register.  I picked one up and turned it over in my palm.  The Hand of Miriam.

"Hand of Miriam" or Hamsa (Arabic) used to ward off the evil eye.

“Hand of Miriam” or Hamsa used to ward off the evil eye.

It’s a good luck charm.  I learned that if the fingers are spread apart, it is to deflect the evil eye.  If the fingers are depicted together, they catch good luck.  At three euros, I added it to the purchase and bought myself a little extra traveling luck.

When I’m traveling on my own and people ask me if I am alone, I say that my husband is meeting me just around the corner at the hotel or a restaurant or a shop.  During that week, I had said it a couple of times and the lie had left me feeling sometimes bereft and sometimes gleeful because in Paris I didn’t have to stick with my sad story.  But I told these women that I was on my own in Paris.  They welcomed me and congratulated me.  I left that place feeling safer than I had all week.  I had been offered food, a touch, help in choosing a gift and a little good luck.

I love the Hamsa, but it feels like a prop, something I am putting on.  I can’t read the Hebrew inscription and I don’t really worry about the evil eye on your average Monday.  It ended up in my suitcase and I only see it when I am packing for trips. It reminds me of Paris and the woman I let myself be that afternoon in the Rue des Rosiers.

The boarding pass became my everyday good luck charm.  I run it through my fingers as I walk from the parking lot to work to remind myself of the woman who went to Paris on her own.  It’s growing silky and soft with age.  It’s corners are worn smooth.