I have a little old black Coach bag, circa 1975, that I bought after I got my first real job. It’s been through a lot of living with me, and still looks pretty good. (Come to think of it, that’s my hope for myself—go through a lot of living, and have the little scratches and scars become part of the beauty.)

A couple of years after the Oakland Hills Fire, a woman stopped me on the street and commented on it. She’d had the same bag and loved it—and lost it, with the rest of her home, in the fire. We agreed that sometimes it is the little things that mark not only the changes in a life, but the continuities in it. I wished I could clone the bag for her, but of course, then it still wouldn’t have been the one that was lost.