Port Key

House Key. With Bow.

Bows Make Everything Better.

The idea I had - take my grandparents letters and photos from November 14, 1944, through early January 1945 and write about them in real time seventy-five years after it all happened.  It still seems like a good idea.  I'm still trying to tell that story.  I have an outline.  But I have so much more.  Or maybe I have something else.

In my now house where I live with Joel and have raised my children to almost adulthood, I have many items of "then".  In my downstairs bathroom, for example, there is a shadowbox with a photo of my grandparents house and a key (the actual key, not a photograph of a key).  The key is to the original lock on the original front door of their house, circa late 1860s.  That once front door was always the back door to the house as I knew it, but this key began it's life as the front door key to a white story and a half clapboard house in Union County, Tennessee about 150 years ago.

And holding this key in my hand this morning - well, if love and longing could open doors and turn back time, I'd be there in less than a heartbeat.  It’s both melancholy and magical holding items that are part of something that once was and that still "is" in my memory.  Places I can close my eyes and see vividly.  And all of this hasn't always felt this close.  It's not always this available in my head and heart and memory - but it's all there now. Crowding the spaces in my head and jockeying for attention - jumping from one to another and I'm trying to see it all, feel it all, write it all. And the words. So many words.  I feel like they're trailing off behind me as I walk and leaving smudged inky fingerprints on everything I touch.  So many words that I've literally pulled myself over while walking to type them out in my phone. And all I want to do is write, but I need days of time and quiet and what I have is busy and noise and fragments of time where all I can do is text ideas to my future self from the track or the hallway at work or walking through downtown and hope they hold a place that I can dive back into. Because this feels fleeting.  Like if I don't do this, it's going to be lost. So Sunday morning are for writing now, I guess.

Shadow Box with Antique Mirror, Reflected