This Is My Legacy. No pressure.

  “Did you buy the boys bulletproof backpacks?” It’s 10:00 the night before school starts and my aunt has clearly forgotten about the house-wide chaos on theses nights, the agonizing over whether they know where to go, who’s in their classes, if we have purchased the right snacks. I used to make a big deal of the last day of summer. There were shopping trips and s’mores and we were always the last ones out of the pool. My mom insists that I gift them a little chocolate every First Day of School morning, “for a sweet school year.” They don’t hear her sentimentality over the joy of Peanut M&M’s. Even during the pandemic, their desks had jars of Peanut M&M’s on them that first, weird, morning. This year, I have COVID, so all the fun crap was replaced by my sixteen-year-old taking the fifteen- and twelve-year-old brothers to Food Lion for some junk food I would NEVER purchase. That seemed to make them at least as happy as being the last ones out of the pool. And my husb...

  I stub my toe on a stone and curse. “AT REST,” it says, coolly. “Aunt Sid, where are you?” I feel her response, her voice, her sensibility more than I hear it. I’m certainly not here, Tootsie. “But,” I say, out loud, not at all concerned about being judged by the 150,000 dead planted here. “But, I have rocks for you. Rocks from Utah and Massachusetts and from the creek behind my house in Virginia.” I wave the rocks over my head, a fist full of orange and gray and shimmering white, held tight to keep the tiniest pebbles from escaping. These rocks have been clanging around in my car for years, clicking in the armrest when I take a turn, avoiding the vacuum when I infrequently clean. When I see a stone and I think of her, when I’m thinking of her and I see a stone, I collect it. “It’s been two decades since I came to this place and I can’t find you.” Not here! she sings. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Surely, my connection with my great aunt, my heart, the deepest w...