At the Foundling Hospital, I stared at that large wheel that rotates into the ancient building, and I tried to imagine how a mother would feel placing her newborn there and then in one half turn losing sight of her forever—almost always it was forever, though the hopeful ones pinned notes or little bits of jewelry, something sewn into the swaddling that the child might someday present as proof of heritage. It seems I stood there for a very long time, and it is one of those memories that comes to me so often. The light was so beautiful, like nothing I had ever seen, and as we walked through the building, I was aware of my hands pressing into the wood and stone of hallways and staircases, joining the prints of hundreds of years, the dust and oils of lives long over and yet still lingering there. You could feel them, hear them whisper.

And maybe that is how it all came to be—yes, I think so. I told your dad this feeling I had; I told him how sometimes I feel I am just on the verge of hearing something. “They whisper,” I said, and he said that that is what he would do in the future, come back and whisper in my ear. And then we began what has been a lifelong back-and-forth argument, because neither of us wants to be the one left behind.

“I want to go first.”

“No, I’m going first. Wait and see.”

We were about to head back out into the light, to drink wine and talk and laugh, and then to our tiny room to make love, our young limbs wrapped and entwined like supple vines, and then sleep and wake to start life all over again. We were already thinking of you both, even though we probably couldn’t have said so in the moment. But how could I not think of you when standing there in that ancient place, in front of a display of hundreds of tokens meant for the sake of remembering and reuniting, the thimbles and buttons and lockets and coins, tiny brass fish and hairpins and keys, all marked in ways that make them unique, all there to say, “I love you. I’ll be back. Please don’t forget me. I’ll be back.”

Shelley