“Remember the prompt from yesterday when your home was on fire and you got to save five items? That means you left a lot of stuff behind. What are the things you wish you could have taken, but had to leave behind?

I wish I had been able to take my ‘box of memories’.

I know it’s silly, but every card my mom has sent me since I have moved away from home I’ve kept. I have graduation cards, little notes students have written in my notebook while my back was turned. Doodles on napkins and scrap paper that people did just to be cute. The booklets for every graduation I have attended to support one of my students (read friends) as they walked across stage to get their diploma.

I even highlighted their name in the booklet so I would remember who I was there for.

It has some of my fortune cookies, too.

Again, silly maybe, but sometimes they mean a lot to me. Sometimes they speak to me, and remind me of something. Sometimes it’s about who I was with when I got the cookie. The moment we shared something together. Sometimes those slips of paper are important to me, and I keep them along with my cards and notes.

All of the different badges that I have had through school and work. My IT badge while I worked at the Citadel. My student badge for Full Sail. My tour badge from before I was even a student. My lab monitor badge, and then my intern badge when I was finally a graduate. And I’m sure if I ever leave the school my faculty badge will be added to the collection.

All of these little tokens are important to me. I want to keep them with me. But if faced with a fire, a life and death choice, I have to think about what will help me best afterwards, and as much as my heart would ache for those memories, they would not help me as much as the items that I took with me in my last post.

I would long for my cross stitchings. All of the hours I have stitched, Scarlet curled by my side while I listened to a book, creating art out of random, seemingly meaningless threads. Burned to ashes. Dust to run through my fingers. I would be sad, but again, they would not help me rebuild my life.

My sketchbooks. I have ones from middle school still. The first pictures I really put thought behind. The first time I sat down and said, “I want to be an artist. I want to ‘learn’ how to draw”.

Those are my records. My reminders of where I started at so I can see how far I have come. They are my history. Hours of my life, again, nothing but ashes. Scattered into the wind as I stand in the center of destruction.

And my books. Both school, work, and personal. Gone.

My cutting board, which was a gift from my younger bother. All of the spices I have gathered over the years for cooking.

The first set of plates I have ever bought, A dark, rich purple set; unlike anything I have been able to find before or since.

My coffee table. The only piece of furniture I have from when I originally moved to Florida. I bought it from Goodwill. It’s nothing special, and the paint is flaking off, and most people would probably tell me to get rid of it anyway.

But it’s mine and I love it. I love that the paint is flaking off and that it has character. That it isn’t prefect. I love it because it’s been one of the consistent things in my life these past 5 years. Just like my plates.

All of these silly things that wouldn’t help me rebuild my life. But all things that I would cry for. Hurt over. Mourn.

I would lose my desktop computer, a $2000 investment. I would lose my new tablet, I would lose my computer desks which were a gift from Mother Earth. I would lose my bookcase from my mom. I would lose clothing and shoes. I would lose all of my possessions.

But I wouldn’t mourn for those things. I wouldn’t care about my technology melting and sizzling.

I would cry and feel like a terrible person because my cutting board was gone. Because I would no longer have that reminder of my brother who is so far away in Germany.

I would cry because I would never have the same purple glass plates. I would feel like a failure because I couldn’t protect the cards that my mom bought for me out of love, to help ease the transition from living at home to living on my own.

I don’t have much, and not everything is important to me. But something are. And they’re important for sentimental reasons.

You can’t replace sentiment.

I would lose irreplaceable items and I would need time to grieve. Not for the expensive things, but for the small things.

The unimportant things.

The real things.