What do you take with you to remember the city that healed your soul?

I was a twenty-year-old exchange student, with probably thirty dollars left in my bank account and an international flight scheduled for the next afternoon– one that would take me back stateside whether I was ready or not. Still, I wandered into that souvenir shop, hoping to find something, anything, that might work. Something I could always carry with me. Something that might help stitch the broken heart tomorrow’s plane would permanently install in me.

Nothing fit. 

That night–our last–I went to the beach with my friends. We ate, drank, and talked, hoping time might take pity on us and slow down… or stop altogether. Either would have worked. But as daylight cracked across the sky, I knew there was nothing left to bargain with: no shooting stars, no lucky coins, no last-minute miracles. My time was up.

So I picked up an empty José Cuervo shot bottle and filled it with sand. My friends chuckled–one said it was illegal–but I sealed it anyway, quietly asking time to promise I would be okay… someday.

I’ve carried that bottle with me to every home I’ve lived in since. Even now, it sits on a shelf in my apartment, just eight minutes from the place where I took the sand nine years ago.

Sometimes I think about giving the sand back. I imagine another anxious girl finding comfort in it the way I did all those years ago. But it has been with me for nearly a decade, the thought of not having it around feels like a child losing her teddy. 

So I leave it where it is for now, content to not make the decision. After all, there will be plenty of time for that later.