Amanda Lamb: Fabric of our lives

I recently had the chance to visit my 80-year-old father and his wife in Pennsylvania after not having seen them in five months. While they are now seeing light at the end of the tunnel—one shot down, one to go—we visited in the driveway on a dreary, wet weekend sitting 15 feet apart on the tailgate of our car while they sat on theirs in the garage. This was hardly the cozy visits we used to share together in years past in their lovely home or in a restaurant. But somehow, we’ve all adapted to this strange new world with its snail’s pace.

Ironically, this past week as we were packing to move to our new home, I found a few things of my mother’s—a pair of clean, neatly folded socks that she had tucked into the zipper pocket of a bag I had never used, and two small wooden hand-carved crosses that were given to her to hold when she was dying of cancer. They were reminders to me that our past is inextricably intertwined in our present and our future, it makes us who we are. It pops up when we least expect it to help ground us.