All that was left were a couple shoeboxes full of God knows what. You’d think shoes, but they were mostly filled with scraps of memorabilia. The script from my high school role as Shelby (the first Black lead our director cast, I proudly add) in Steel Magnolias. Prom photos. Actress headshots. More headshots. A callback letter for a television series out in Los Angeles that I didn’t end up getting. A starred review for one of my performances printed in The Wilkinsburg Sun. All the good parts of my life tucked into a couple of dusty shoeboxes.

Picking up the largest shoebox in the stack, a heaviness shifted inside the cardboard, tipping the weight too far to one side. Out fell a pile of old pictures, musty with time and captivity. I picked them up, leafing through them as I dropped each one back into the box. I paused halfway through, catching the sepia hue of a photo taken before my time.

My father and mother, younger than I was now, foreheads touching, faces beaming, arms entwined. The contrast between Dad’s umber skin and Mom’s latte white had melted into my pecan flesh. Her eyes, his lips, her smile, his oddly long middle toe. Pieces of them created pieces of me. I saw a blend of my parents in the mirror every day, and missed them every day. I flipped it over and read Mom’s handwriting:

Devin and Josie forever (1989)

Setting the photo aside, I continued my trek into the past as I found another picture, newer, this one 1990s bright. There I was, mini-me, baby me, small enough to fit in the nook of my father’s arms, my mother beside a picnic basket, the three of us in the backyard of the house I grew up in. I recognized the yellow shed with green trim in the background. My mom leaned back on her elbows, her thin, strict lips turned up in a smile aimed at the sunshine while my father’s gaze met the camera.

I traced my father’s handsome face with my fingertip. A face made for the big screen. Cheekbones like a tiny mountain ridge. A Denzel Washington smile of perfectly aligned chiclets. My father had shoved most traces of my mother’s sun-hating genetics aside, giving me all of the best parts of him.