Love, endurance, and a heart-shaped box of chocolates.

-„You will come to Asha’s birthday, won´t you?” Nia asked me a day before her daughter would turn one year old. “You have to take pictures of her first steps!”

Asha learned to walk in the shelter for victims of domestic violence where I was working.

I went shopping for a birthday present for the toddler: shoes with little pink birds embroidered on them. As I walked home from the mall, I thought about Asha and Nia, and how her daughter´s birthday would also be the last at the shelter. The day after they would have to move out, to an old, rundown apartment, which also doubled as a halfway house.

I thought about the tiled floor in the room at the shelter: “I can never get it clean, no matter how hard I scrub.” Nia once told me. She had done her best to make the little room a home for little Asha. She placed a colorful sheet over a worn-down love seat, s there would be something cheerful in the otherwise very depressing building.

She wasn´t allowed to have very much. There was a small stack of books on a shelf, and a small round table, where Nia sat and watched Asha eat while she drank mostly coffee to quell her hunger.

At her intake, I went over the four-page list of rules, she had to agree on, in order to stay at the shelter. I informed her that urine analysis could be requested at any time. and that I would stop by regularly to make sure the daily minimum household chores were met, like cleaning the dishes, not leaving food on the counter, and keeping the floor tidy.

Nia was friendly and kept smiling at me. I felt like my welcome was suggesting she was an addict, dirty and so messed up in life she needed a curfew and pee tests. I nearly choked when I had to point out this was not a “home,” but an emergency shelter.

Nia found a part-time job as a landscaper. She trimmed shrubs, fought back overgrown berries, and picked tiny blades of grass from places they weren´t supposed to be. 

She cleaned the floors and toilets at homes of people I had sought out for her because Nia was desperate for money. The people who let her clean their houses weren´t rich, but they had a cushion beneath them, like parents or family who could swoop in with money. Nobody was swooping in for Nia. Plus, most of those people owed me one.

In one of our first sessions, I had to ask the obligatory question about Nia´s personal goals. She said she would try to make things work with Asha´s father. She thought if she tried hard enough, she would figure things out and make them work. A fantasy that carried her for too long over the abuse of Nia´s father's hand.

I sat reading on my bed, later that evening a streaming course of vague and distant memories started running wild through my head. A cloud of sadness started to engulf me. A hint of nostalgia washed through me. a sentimental yearning for a former place somewhere in a distant time. Not events, or parties, but rather heart-warming moments. I granted the images to waft into my consciousness. Myrtle mad Augusts started to bring a smile to my face. Sugary vapors and more sweet images kept coming back to me. Thoughts of love and absent goodbyes. A repertoire of a far and old connection. I fell asleep, while a dormant memory waited for me to retrieve it. 

Familiar smells started to fill my nostrils. The smell of peppermint and a hint of nostalgia whooshed through me. the aroma brings up a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a place in a distant time.

The tide seemed to change, I stood behind a dark iron fence. I could hear chimes in the distance. I was in a borderland, 

between the here and there. The air grew foul. I was not alone. I sensed the presence of imminent danger. All over a sudden, a stealthy strong arm grabbed hold of me. it was a man. a tall man. he had jumped out of the darkness like he was made of it. In an equal measure, he was blinding and transparent. He seemed to merge with the landscape. He locked his eyes with mine and I felt like I was floating in an ocean.

-“The dead don´t need offerings.!” He said, “Give them to the living.”

There was a woman. Where did she come from? She was laughing. The woman was familiar, I recognized something of myself in her.

Air started rushing past my face. I was falling, ever faster until I woke in my bed, with a fascinating and strange feeling of something familiar.

-“Strange,” I thought, “in a dream, there´s never a before. Only an afterward when you wake up.” 

The woman, I started to remember who she was. A most remarkable woman. The only person who had shown me kindness as a child and who knew all my dreams. Sweet images kept coming back to me. Sitting amongst wildflowers, gazing at the stars, capturing fireflies in a jar, baking a pie together. And a box… a heart-shaped box. It had once been filled with truffles.

I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to make coffee. While the coffee was running I opened the windows and my nose got bombarded with a detonation of smells. Hints of vanilla, a light wave of strawberry, and chocolate. Like an embrace…

 I lived one floor up from a retail space that had been vacant for a long time. Over the past few weeks, I had seen people walking in and out and heard sounds like a renovation. It now smelled strongly like a bakery would open there soon.

I turned around and wanted to pour myself a cup of coffee, but I didn`t. Instead, I walked to my closet, and there, under a pile of winter sweaters, I found it, the heart-shaped box. Call it a hunch, but I knew immediately that this box, which I had been so happy with as a child, now needed a new owner. Nia also deserved a present for her daughter's birthday.

I felt light and relieved. I took a few deep breaths:

-“ Thank you, Grandma.” I whispered. 

I quickly changed my clothes and ran downstairs. I can´t explain why, something drove me to it. I was standing in front of the plain door, bearing a sign “Come on in.” I stood there for a while on the stoop, 

a rather brusque man with a large burlap sack cleared his throat behind me:

-“Excuse me,” he grumbled, struggling with the weight of the sack.

I reached for the door: “Here you go.” I said, and the man pushed past me into the shop. I decided to just follow him in. I took stock of the shop; it was rather small. A display of chocolate bars took up a wall to the left. Through the shelves, I caught glimpses into a white sterile kitchen. To my right, a display rose from the counter, and my nostrils caught its contents. Chocolate truffles were laid out in rows, each one a work of art. Swirled in on themselves, delicate artistic spatters bearing unusual names in front of their tray.

-“Can I help you?” a voice startled me out of my musings. “Can I help you with anything?” he asked again with a genuine smile in place.

-“I want to fill up a box with chocolates.” I said hesitantly.

The young man´s eyes lit up with delight. He gestured as he spoke:

-“You came to the right place! I have a passion for chocolate.” His eyes danced as he continued, “These are not mere chocolates. Each truffle is the beginning of a journey!”

After a short pause, he asked: “Do you know, which ones you want?”

-“Surprise me!” I answered.

I ran upstairs and put the chocolates in the heart-shaped box, took a quick shower, and made it on my way to Asha´s birthday party.

Asha laughed and babbled as she made her way toward me, across the tiled floor. Years of dirt etched in that floor. I did my best to keep smiling at Asha as everything was all right and took out my camera. I took in the girl´s feet, the roundness of her face, and the radiance of her smile.

We went to celebrate Asha´s first birthday at a picnic table in the park. Nia had made lemonade ad I brought muffins. A young man with a guitar invited himself to our table and played as we sang to the birthday girl.

-“Take lots of pictures!” Nia begged me. Asha looked radiant, and her mom wanted to show her daughter good memories to look back on.

The day Nia left, there was only one duffle bag to move out. I drove her to their new home. 

-“I never had the luxury of a bath in my life!” 

Nia cried out. I had to force my stomach not to evict my breakfast from earlier, I wouldn´t have dreamed to take a bath in there with my clothes on.

-“We´re so lucky!” Nia said, “We´re so lucky.”

Their bedroom had a window that faced the road. The refrigerator grazed the cupboards on the opposite side in the kitchen. I walked across the white tiles of the kitchen floor, which resembled the floor at the shelter, and opened the door to a small outlook deck, just big enough for Asha to stretch her legs.

I hugged Nia and said goodbye. A bittersweet goodbye, in this ugly place for a new beginning.

I did my rounds the next morning and stopped at the room where Nia and her daughter had moved out. I opened the door to the still empty room and looked at that floor. I saw Nia’s ghost reading a book on the worn-out love seat she covered with a colorful sheet to ad something cheerful to the room. I saw Asha sitting in the built-in drawer under the bed and smiling. Their only crime was a lack of means to survive, therefore considered guilty of being an addict, so messed up in life she needed to pee in a little cup for testing, and still: she considered herself lucky.

Two weeks later I received a letter from Nia. She wrote she felt exposed in her new place. Most of the other people in the building came from homeless shelters and jail or prison. She missed the seclusion of her little room in the shelter, but most of all she missed me. She thanked me for the heart-shaped chocolate box. The dark truffles with sea salt and lemon had been her favorite. But more than that she would treasure the box forever. She would make it a treasure box for little Asha, a treasure trove of precious echoes, that would one day lay open the sky for her and maybe tell her the secrets of the world, telling a story: their story. A story of love, endurance, and a heart-shaped box of chocolates.