We are the kind who believed that even small gestures made in this material world could change what might have been a loaded outcome— It's why my mother had the floorboards torn up and relaid horizontally across the threshold, so the household luck would not run out the door. But we no longer have that house— nor all the treasured things we kept in its rooms. We are in temporary homes caring for or cared for by others. We listen to the wind part the willows, watch the blue and gold rowboats move back and forth across the lake. Count the moths drawn to the lamps in our rooms.