A hand-made quilt from a housekeeping supervisor in Key West.

A box of shells.

Two of them included notes that said, in some form of words, that the same thing had happened in their family.

Not the forgery.

The other part — a child kept from a parent, or a parent kept from a child, by somebody in the middle who had decided it was for the best.

Two out of eleven, unprompted, in six weeks.

I had thought, until that point, that what my mother did was exotic.