Six years of my original interior design sketches, my hand-drawn floor plans, and my grandmother’s silver teaspoons were all still inside the house.

I lifted the heavy boxes into my trunk, closed the lid, and drove six miles south to my mother’s small house on Elm Street.

Evelyn met me on the back porch holding a striped bath towel.

We carried the two cardboard boxes into her guest room with the twin bed and laid them flat on the beige bedspread.

We unpacked every item one by one onto the mattress.

A chipped ceramic coffee mug, three old grocery store receipts, a pair of worn canvas gardening gloves, a plastic spatula, and two mismatched socks.