On days when I’m completely adrift, I think of all the things that remind me of myself. Amber, because it is golden and warm, hard and malleable at the same time. Teapots, round-bellied and givers of comfort. Owls, fluffy and soft, sharp and watchful. Short grain brown rice. Rainstorms. Badgers. Old books. Gluten free scones.

If I cannot come back to myself, I remember the people who raised me. My mother is homegrown tomatoes, eaten in the garden in the heat of summer. Is a cup of Irish Breakfast tea on a Sunday morning, sipped at while watching birds at the feeder on the porch. Is hours of homeschooling, frustration, understanding, support. Is days in the sun by the lake, planning things, knowing that we are both the sort of people who will make sure they come to pass.

My father is learning to paint, the smell of acrylics faint but distinct. Is the sound of a cleaver hitting a wooden cutting board through meat and spices while he narrates like my very own cooking show. Is a bowl of popcorn covered in odd things, eaten in front of tv shows about superheroes. Is a little blue collection of Yeats poems.

My grandmother is the smell of garlic, is the feel of its papery skin sticking to my fingers when I slice through it to make a pasta dish in the middle of the night when I have been too sick to move for days. She is being curled up on a couch and believing that it is more comfortable than the bed, even though it isn’t. Is us watching awards shows and dance shows for the outfits, not what’s going on. She is the hours of planning my hundred different weddings, late into the night.

If remembering the pieces of myself is not enough, I at least know I am some amalgam of warm summer tomatoes, superhero tv shows, and the papery skin of garlic. I’m somewhere in that. And that’s not nothing.