Mr. Henderson called me by my full name every morning, even when I was late. He knew every kid on that block, and he said each name like it mattered.
My aunt drove six hours unannounced, pulling up in a cloud of dust. She brought a lamp from a garage sale, a dime-store thing with a faded price sticker still stuck to the base. She said she'd come to rescue me.
But I had already made my choice. My mother's hips were bone on bone, and the nearest clinic was forty miles away. I was learning to clean teeth because it meant I could stay close.
I never told my aunt that. I just thanked her for the lamp and put it on the nightstand. It still sits there, the sticker a little more yellow each year.
The crossing guard's whistle is something I think about when I'm kneeling beside a patient, scraping plaque. He knew every name, and he never forgot.
I guess I'm like that too. I remember the names of the kids I grew up with, their parents, the ones who left and the ones who stayed.
That lamp cost fifty cents. I've never dusted the sticker off. It reminds me that some things are worth keeping exactly as they are.