Two years after we lost our home and community in the Marshall Fire, I finger through the tiny things sifted from ash near where our bedroom might have been. My son has kept the stuff for me in a cottage cheese container in his garage. I dimly recognize a few objects–watch case and steel strap, crusty beads from necklaces, even a charred earring or two, all the colors turned to gray or black, everything smooth now sharp, rough. Horrible dark dank odor. I’m surprised I recognize anything in the small twisted pile.

Today, I have decided to take the lumps of mystery metal to an assayer to see if any silver has survived, but I find a bit of gold, I think. Among the gray, it is decidedly shiny and heavy underneath its crust. Lumpy as oatmeal cookie dough. A few dollars for the fused and melted mystery metal would be helpful. I have no idea what gold is worth in terms of dollars. Then a wise friend wonders if I would rather make something from the small gold lump, a pendant for a necklace, an earring, even a ring. 

For awhile, I have thought I would try kintsugi–I bought a kit with its tiny brushes and micro-vials of glue and gold paint, but I haven’t opened it–to transform the three pieces of a gravy boat, once red, now fire brushed iridescent black and lovely as a raven’s feather. Today, looking at crusty gold in our container of remains, I think yes, perhaps I can make something out of the fire rubble. I will make a magic charm, perhaps a Sora bird or the Sora-Q moon rover, that will be a gift for my granddaughter. The lump looks oddly like her best loved stuffed animal, a sheep. One of the most painful things lost in the fire, of all the stuff I have learned to un-care for, is what I had hoped would be shared when I die.. Perhaps this bit of gold contains my mother’s ring and the Alaska gold charm of a tiny frog my sister gave me. Sure, it’s all just stuff, but in some of that stuff are the atoms that my beloveds touched and then gave me with their love. I think of my grown children in their white hazard-protection gear, sifting through the pit of our home, generous and grieving with us while we watched, hoping. I feel happy thinking I might be able to pass something on, something with a story, my story, our story.