For years I sent my mother cards that I'd made with photos that I'd taken attached. I knew that she saved them, at least the ones she either thought were "beautiful" or had touched her in some way. Mostly she saved them because I was her son and that's the sort of thing mothers, some mothers, do. Like grade school report cards, stick figure drawings, plaster casts of pudgy hands fully articulated; all proofs irrefutable of something, all worth saving. Some of the photos she carefully peeled from their backings and placed, with the help of small magnets, on her refrigerator door. As though sixty years had not passed and I'd just strolled into her kitchen in short pants, one knee scraped and scabbed, and handed them to her with candy-smeared fingers.

When she died, my sisters shouldered the task of winnowing through her belongings. And lucky me, some of them were sent my way. Now I know without doubt, having consulted a brittle, yellowing document, my exact birth weight, and the time to the minute when I abandoned the umbilical cord and took first gasp of breath.

And there in the box full of my mother's stuff, stacked and piled like all the other paper, were my photographs. Torn from their framing card stock backings they seemed thin, malnourished. Waifs, orphans. Too light, too insubstantial, easy prey to any harsh wind, unable to bear the full weight of unexpressed love.

I think they miss their magnets.

I think they miss the hum of the fridge.

8/30/2022