I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

Many of us have moved from one house or apartment to another.

Many of us have had to pack up our things and decide what to take and what to leave behind.

If we are fortunate, we are not moving under duress, not rushed because of danger.

If we are fortunate, we have a place to go, and we, along with our memories, are safe.

But of course, this isn't always the case.

I'm thinking about all of the precious things that are left behind when people flee their homes or their homelands.

The objects we see lying in rubble on the news, shoes, children's toys, family photographs, household items.

I'm thinking, too, of the beloved keepsakes carried in suitcases, or hidden, sewn inside clothing, for example, on long journeys.

It is a privilege to have lived in the same part of the same country safely for generations.

It is a privilege to have a basement, an attic, or a garage filled with boxes, books, family

photos, children's artwork from years of school. They are just things, yes, and they are not just things at all. I try to remember this privilege when

complaining about clutter. I still have bins of my children's baby clothes, not because I'll

ever need the hand-me-downs, but because I want to remember my son and

daughter when they were small enough to wear the ladybug onesie, or the little coat with a

bear ears on the hood. I keep my grandmother's jewelry and rarely wear it, but when I do, like when I wear her perfume,

I feel her with me.

It would break my heart to lose these ties to the past.

Today's poem imagines the things that the speaker's ancestors

might have carried, and they're not just things at all. They are memories made concrete.

What the suitcase bearing my family name might have contained when it arrived at Auschwitz

by Ava Nathaniel Winter.

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