I am sifting through earth. I feel it in my fingers and finding its way into my shoes. It is warm in my hands and in my heart because it's her land. Her heritage. A slide show of memories that flow through her heart: grandma's pink flowers, grandpa hanging his shaving mirror on an obliging limb, traversing the land with excited siblings searching for gold, the smell of a familiar place awakening eighteen-year-old pictures and stories of another time.

I am new to this picture, absorbing the scene, listening to their words and watching their expressions, filtering them through me like the sun, drifting through the branches above. I want to preserve this moment in my mind, store her memories in pockets of my mind where I can easily re-capture them. I want to know her history by heart, to record it so it can be voiced when our children ask where they're from, so I can understand her joy, along with the source of her tears, painful pieces of this puzzling life that sometimes refuses to make sense. I will always remember this time of laughter, of throwing the ball back and forth, of arms flung around each other, of arguments and embraces, passing stories to the kids about when their mommy and aunty and uncle were little like them. I will always remember her there with the sun in her face, collecting the sights and sounds. I will always remember the well of emotion rushing over me on our way, feeling the depths of her sadness and the beauty that inspired it.

And I know somewhere, her grandparents were smiling yesterday to see all three generations of them playing together, remembering together, sending the land off to the next hands in style.

April 9, 2002