We had big plans.
We were going camping.
My mother placed an empty cardboard box in the kitchen and once a week deposited some camping essential into it. Toothbrushes and a flashlight one week, pop-up camping cups and a box of matches another. We were planning a big trip. To the Adirondacks, or maybe to New Hampshire, where we’d pick blueberries all day and see what a real mountain looked like. Maybe we’d go back to the house at the foot of Mount Washington. Back to the place my grandfather built, when he was alive and my mother was a girl. Back when the world was as sweet as it ever would be.