I found it in the last box, wrapped in newspaper from 2011. A felt angel with a crooked smile my mother sewed when I was six.
We stopped doing Christmas at her house three years ago. She moved into memory care, my sister went to her in-laws, and nobody said it out loud. The tradition just quietly stopped breathing.
The paperback on my windowsill has been there since September, its pages rain-warped into a permanent wave. I keep meaning to bring it inside. I keep not doing it.
Gary, the commissioner of our Tuesday beer league, texted last week to ask if I was doing okay out there. I said fine. He's the kind of man who checks on people by pretending he needs a sub for next week.
I sat on the kitchen floor with the angel in my lap for a long time. Then I bought a two-foot tree from the drugstore and hung it on the top branch, alone, in my apartment, on a Tuesday.
Nobody saw. Nobody will. But I'm the person now who keeps things. Who hangs the crooked angel. Who lets the paperback warp because it looks like something worth surviving.
I think that might be who I was always turning into.