I’ve kept it safely tucked away, like a treasured antique, yet carried it with me always—and for over fifty years now—through ups and downs, through moves and marriages. It’s just an old shoebox, but she wrapped it in what is now vintage paper—cherubic cartoon infants, teddy bears, building blocks. She wrapped the bottom and the lid individually, so it can be opened without unwrapping. The top is festooned with hand-drawn bubble letters that spell out Shannon, the name she gifted me sight unseen. Inside exists a trove of treasures—a baby blanket, a few photos, and a letter. This is my inheritance, the entirety of all my birth mother left behind for me the day she left me behind. 

The blanket remains whisper-soft. It was handmade, in a basic crochet “single stitch.” She must’ve missed a stitch, or maybe added a stitch because it’s off-kilter, almost trapezoidal, but I couldn’t possibly love it more. I hug it tight to my chest and picture her. I imagine that brick building that called itself a home, and its revolving cast of wayward souls. I smile as I watch them gather together in the evenings, watch  “Bonanza,” and “Laugh-In,” and crochet the night away, wrists perched atop their swollen bellies. I envision a bushel-size basket of yarn, likely donated by local church-going ladies, tsk-tsking about idle hands being the devil’s workshop. There are no baby showers, no balloons, or bassinets. It’s just my mother and the other melancholic misfits, shuttered away from society, crafting blankets and booties for babies they’d never hold.

She tucked an assortment of photos into the blanket like a secret bonus prize. They are faded now, color-drained from time and tears. One is her solo, in what must be a school photo. Prim, proper, and stunning. Mounds of dark hair accented with a Mod headband bow. In another, she’s swollen and smiling, fat with impending me—our only photo together. A third is of the doomed couple, broad-smiling before a watery backdrop. “Me and Your Daddy–Lake Michigan, 1968,” is printed on the back. Two more photos, both black and white, stern-faced old-timey looking even for the Sixties, on which she’s written, “Your dad’s parents” on one, and  “My parents” on the other. It’s my life history in a handful of photos. It’s a road map through the makers of me.

And then, my most prized possession of my most prized possessions—a letter, neatly folded inside an envelope with a hand-drawn heart again addressed to the name I lost when I lost her. Years have yellowed the single page, which smells more woodsy than musty. It’s half-printed, half-cursive as if she were writing to both little kid me and grown-up me, confused yet aware of the eternity of me. My mother-to-never-be drew hearts above every “i” still existing in that in-between of no longer a girl but not quite a woman. 

The words unfurl like ribbon candy—hard, sweet, and timeless:  

Sweet Shannon,

I wish you love, and light, and peace. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. Please try to understand. You deserve the best parents, and a big house, and all the things I want to give you, but can’t. 

Please know I love you so very much, more than the moon and the sum of all the stars in the sky. I will never forget you. I will hold you in my heart forever.

And then, scribbled in teeny tiny letters, written up, then down, and repeated over and over, along the four sides of the letter, like a high school secret. 

I wanted you. They took you. One day I will find you. 

These words are engrained in my memory, but my memory is imaginary, filled with half-truths and wishful thinking. The box, its contents—none of it is real. It is metaphorical yet indestructible, fashioned from the salt of my tears and held together with longing and loss—only and always in my mind.

It is the letter she never wrote me, or perhaps just never left for me, or maybe they just never passed it on to me. 

And look out, she doesn’t write.

Look out your window, 

As you grow

Forever know,

That moon, those stars, I’m looking at them too.

When you sleep dream of me, and I will dream of you

And when you look in the mirror, 

Smile at what you see, for that’s me

Forever looking back at you. 

I cherish the words that never were, yet somehow were invisibly inked inside me. I tuck my invisible photos inside my make-believe blanket and listen for the voice that once echoed all around me. I wonder if that was the only thing that was ever real and I treasure my phantom keepsakes, tucked gently inside the box she never left me, that I am destined to carry forever.