John had claimed the second-floor guest bedroom as his office, leaving me a corner of the basement for my crafts room. While he had a door to close on himself, to lock him inside with his wall of sociology books and his computer and writing table, my supply of paints, wooden strips, and threads had to settle for a utility table on the brown linoleum floor. The only television in the house was down here too, but I rarely watched any of it. I enjoyed making gift baskets, and TV only distracted me. I liked to make these baskets for the house, for friends. When Aliyah got her own apartment in Center City two years ago, I made baskets for every room in the place. In this new house, I planned to do the same: one basket in almost every room. My parents’ house was also filled with these baskets, which my mother used to make by weaving strips of olive branch wood, soaked in paint, into round or flat shapes. First she built a foundation, then the sides, and finally she weaved in other strips as a decorative pattern. “In the camp, a UNRWA program come and tell us, do this and we give you money,” she said, “so we do it.” Her mother and aunts had done it for years, and though my mother didn’t particularly enjoy it, she had discovered that she could make money by weaving these designs.

I wanted to stamp every room in the new house with my impression, to mark it for myself. Our furniture belonged to John, the heavy oak coffee table and the sofas in the blue plaid pattern that were donations from his grandfather. They still smelled like Pops Martin—I breathed in the scent of cigar smoke and Old Spice whenever I napped on one of them, waiting for John to come home from teaching his class at the university. Teaching sociology 101 and other basic courses were part of his assignments as an instructor at Drexel University. “I need to prove myself, sweetie,” he explained to me once, “not by my teaching—that means nothing, really. I have to write books, give conference papers, prove myself that way.” He wanted a tenure-track position, and it was all part of publish or perish, he told me. I loved how smart John was—I’d met him in college, when he was even skinnier than he was now, though he still wore the same pair of old-fashioned, horn-rimmed antique glasses. His brown hair still had the same sheen, thickness, and curl, and I enjoyed sitting with him in front of our small black cast-iron stove, running my fingers through his hair as he lay his head in my lap, talking and watching the logs burn.