I must have been ten or eleven years old. I remember helping my mom dig a charred cedar chest out of the pump house. She said that her and dad had salvaged it from the previous property owner's burn pile. Mom and I knelt on the porch together all afternoon, sanding down the wood. We had great plans to stain and refurbish it. Wood-stained fingers and days later, those plans came to pass. It was beautiful. We found a place for it in my room at the end of my bed. I kept extra blankets and stuffed animals on top of it for many years. And over those years it was where I stored away letters for my future husband and placed dinnerware and blankets for our future home. My mom called it a hope chest. Today, I pulled everything out of that chest. The eggshell platters that I picked out and ordered with my mom when I was in middle school, specifically to start my hope chest. The pink cocktail glasses my grandma handed down to me when I was eleven. The fine china tea set from Poland that my mother bought for me at an auction when I was fifteen. The linens that had been passed down from my grandma and aunt, one of them embroidered by my aunt while she was in school. The copper silverware my grandfather bought while he was stationed in Thailand that I might just leave behind in my mom's kitchen as a sentiment for her now that he has passed. The mint dinnerware my family gave me for my twenty-third birthday when I thought that I was moving out for the final time. As I spread out every item on my bedroom floor and stared down at it, I teared up. Many years have gone by of hoping and dreaming and many years have dragged on full of heartbreak and indifference. My mom built this alter in my life, and she called it hope. Just as many other mother's have done for their daughters. As I grew up, it was always there: at the end of my bed, beneath my window sill or beside my desk. And no matter how many men let me down, no matter how many letters to my future husband I crumpled up and threw away, it remained buried in the back of my heart, this promise: love would come. I remember being ecstatic that day when my mom suggested the idea of making a hope chest. I remember the sun glowing against the tall autumn grass as we trekked outside to see what we had to work with. I remember the airplanes humming above us like I was certain my heart would someday hum with true love. But, as a child, I had not yet realized the fullness of what a beautiful thing that moment and that chest would mean to me. I had an inkling of a realization that I was not only being given gifts for my future, but that I was, indeed, being given stories. I could not yet recognize the feeling in my soul as I stood by my mother, listening. But I was being rooted into something: something beyond me, before me, and bigger than me. The same blood that runs through my veins ran through many women before me. Women who walked hard paths and loving paths and who turned out stronger for it. At eleven years old, I was only beginning to recognize the blood within my skin, and today, as I begin a new family and a new life, I am only just realizing the wildness birthed to my flesh that I will birth to my children's. And I am strengthened by the resilient spirits and knowing looks just within my grasp as I reach for that platter my momma gave me.. Blog by Nakita Stone, June 9th, 2018
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