Our family kept heirloomsboth obvious and strange.Coconut pirate headswith bandanas and woodendaggers in their teeth.A polar bear-skin rug.A collapsable top hat.
But most fascinating wasa gold medallion, with a photograph of my mother,posed and colorized,and mounted under glass.She kept it on her desk.I had never seen her with dark hair, so young, so beautiful.
I was nine when she left alone for a “vacation” (we’d never been separated).I fell sick with a feverand begged my older sisterto bring me the medallion,which I lifted from its caseand kissed, then pressed against my cheeks, feeling how coolthe metal was. Soon after— days, not weeks—she filledmy doorway, rushed in, and gathered me in arms.
For my mother, the medallionhad been an artifact of vanity,taken before the births of my brothers and sister;before my father’s drink and adultery; before her own broken dreams.
During her absence, she haddecided to stay with the marriage,she explained; I was the writer, home from college. I’d begun researching our family storyand asked to see the medallion.
My sister, in her mid-eighties, divorced, house-ridden,and a continent away,remains the medallion’s keeperfor her daughters and grandsons.
