TRANSCRIPT

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

Wool socks. Diapers. Mittens. Hats. Dresses. The fear of God. Rye flour
ground coarsely between stones. Clogs made from scraps of lumber
and leather. The Torah in Hebrew and Russian. One good wool suit. A 
child’s necktie. The Ze’enah U-Re’enah. A straight razor. A hand mirror.
The plague of boils. Photographs of faces no longer considered human.
The plague of darkness. Armbands bearing the Star of David. Wild
yeast. Letters from Palestine and America. A sweater knitted from the
remnants of other sweaters. Pots and pans. A spoon, a knife, a fork for
the daily business of taking small portions of this world into the gullet. A
vessel for ritual handwashing. A cigarette lighter. Pipe tobacco. Six neatly
folded men’s undershirts. First clear flour. Kippot. Tallitot. A butcher’s 
knife. The plague of blood. A carved wooden doll clothed in a kerchief.
A needle, thread, and thimble. Woolen vests. The plague of locusts.
Candles for marking the Sabbath. Enough flour to feed all the Jews of
Słupca. Worms in the flour. Roaches in the flour. Mice in the flour. Rats
in the flour. Nothing that can be recovered. Nothing that can be known.

"What The Suitcase Bearing My Family Name Might Have Contained When it Arrived at Auschwitz" by Ava Nathaniel Winter from TRANSGENESIS © 2024 Ava Nathaniel Winter. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Milkweed Editions.