My parents split when I was two, and neither are wealthy. I was raised by my mom and her family. Both sides of my family tend to fall into talking about inheritances when I’m around. Maybe it’s because I never asked much of them, and they want to say that they will give me something someday, I don’t know. I’m not looking for anything from them, life was enough.

As far as keepsakes and heirlooms go, there are a few odds and ends I’d like. I’d like a teacup that belonged to my great-grandma’s family. I’d like some family pictures, or at least to scan them, from my dad’s side.

Of my mom’s things, I only want the little white treasure box. Some of its contents are: a string of love beads, a handful of Apache teardrops, homemade nails from a settler’s homestead, my grandpa’s tribal ID and his arrow-shaped tribal police badge, There is a piece of mahogany that she always wanted to make a belt buckle from, a few eagle claws that I can’t legally have, some of the round ivory teeth from an elk, miscellaneous coins, a headstall for a bridal that was braided from horsehair. It’s like a little museum.

There is a string-tie than my mom made for her dad. It is fashioned to look like a Hereford bull, beaded around a piece of wood she carved, with white bantam rooster spurs for horns.

There is one thing within the box that I don’t know if I will keep. It is a common little pebble with a hole through it.

“Kathy sat and worked at this with a nail, day after day for weeks, when we were kids, eight or nine,” said my mom. Mom and her sister Kathy don’t get along anymore, but Kathy put a leather lace through the stone and gave it to my mom.

There is something mysterious about this. I’ve tried to drill a hole through the same kind of stone, and I got nowhere, no matter how hard I tried, and why would a little kid put so much time and effort into such an enterprise in the first place? What was going on in my aunt’s mind? Is that too personal of a question to ask?

There is a part of me that wants this stone, enough that the thought of pocketing it twitched a little . . . back behind my right ear . . . I can feel it now actually. However, if my Aunt Kathy survives my mom, then I know I need to ask her about it, and if she wants it back, then it belongs to her, because with her, the most meaning within the artifact resides.

The little white treasure box usually sits on a box of letters; letters from the man who would have been my dad if he hadn’t died in Viet Nam. I wonder about how things would have been. I don’t know if will keep these or not, probably not.