As the 70s wore on, it seemed as if the world around me was falling further into a state of upheaval, and I was itching to express my opposition to the war. But what could a Mexican-American high school student with a strict cultural upbringing do?

The weight of this, holding it in my hand now, reminds me of my living memories of time with her: Endless garden, family farm, and wide, straw-colored fields and pussy willows, the ‘new’ car (a Dodge Dart) that came out only on Sundays, for church.

The house is clean, tidy, freshly vacuumed, like always. The shades are closed to keep out the heat. It’s dark here. In every room, there are the framed photographs. I see her in them, but not really. It’s like looking at a ghost. Or maybe a shell.

Still, I kept the ribbon. It now lives, many years later, in a tin Curious George box from my teenage years, as a reminder of my mom’s ingenuity, an ingenuity that took some time for me to understand. As a teenager, I thought my mom was different and weird, and that that was a bad thing.

Fanny brought many of your paintings back East, where they hung on my family’s walls. They were part of the story I asked my mother to tell me again and again, about you and Fanny and her life as an artist. It filled me with possibility.

Looking back, I wonder, what was the appeal of this Pilgrim's Progress, now carefully preserved in worn, brown, hand-smoothed paper? Why did it hold a pride of place that eclipsed the Bible, the most prized of all books in every village home?

The tapes came in fun colors: red, green, plaid, wood grain, and a mod flower power design in purple and pink. My dad gave them to me– the label maker, the tapes, along with stacks of those peel and stick colored dots you see in office supply stores.

My mother stored leftover buttons in a peanut butter jar. She was a child of the depression, and few things went to waste in our household. The buttons were taken from discarded clothes that had been outworn, outgrown, or outdated.

Strands of yarn dangle at the wrist, and my fingers poke through the little holes in the top seam. One is slightly larger than the other. Despite these imperfections and their apparent fragility, the mittens endure, as does my mom, who made them for me.

I look at that little girl and see a whole history, a whole family, in those eyes– a family who went through more than I will ever have to go through, so that I would never have to. A family I will never know.

My mom held Piggy for the first time when she rescued him, dirty and abandoned, at the side of the road by our old house, after my father died. She left him under a tree for a few days, in case his previous owner might want him back.

I keep them in a paper box in the bottom of a drawer, with other earrings and other boxes, stashed in a frayed black-velvet drawstring bag. The bag’s mouth is edged in red and orange seed beads. My grandmother made it.

Mini pearls from mom’s wedding outfit form her necklace and halo. The wings, made from cardboard covered in tissue feathers, spread out broadly from her back. She has been around to see my parents raise eight children, and has been visited by over 35 grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren.