When I was a kid—somewhere around 3 or 4—my grandmother came to visit. She was ahead of her time in a lot of ways (she drove, but her husband did not). As a gift, she brought a coffee grinder.

That very same coffee grinder lasted around forty years—surviving multiple moves. Recently, the base has started to crack, and the crack began to elongate. And I finally had to admit, it was time for a new one.

Even though it’s a coffee grinder, and not a particularly fancy one, I marvel at how long its lasted. How little me grew up into adult me and used it, where my mother had used it before me.

How that coffee grinder has been around through so much of my life—so many changes, chances, and returns. How, throughout all the twists and turns and upheavals, it remained the same.

It doesn’t have any particular sentimental attachment for me, aside from the fact that my grandmother gave it to us—my mom, specifically. And I thought about my grandmother every time I used it, just as I do whenever I pull her rolling pin out of the drawer, every time I use her cast iron loaf pan, or her heavy-duty pizza pans.

Artifacts from her life have been mainstays in mine. Some day, they’ll be artifacts of my life—things I leave behind. Things that maybe look ordinary, unsurprising—but that matter.

Writing is a lot like this, too. You put words on the page and hope they last. Hope they stay. Hope they resonate. I think, too, about the things people have said to me over the years that I carry with me—some good, some bad, some that fall in between.

Memories are artifacts, too, although perhaps less reliable given the nature of memory. Siblings can experience the same moment, the situation, and remember it differently. Sometimes, memory gets shaped by emotion. Sometimes, we remember things that we’d rather forget with exacting precision.

At the end of the day, the things that remain always fascinate me. Not as evidence, although sometimes it can be that. But as distilled remnants, artifacts, solid manifestations of something that cannot be easily explained, only felt. Like sea glass washed up on the shore, smooth and glittering. It was once something else. It once had sharp edges. It probably wasn’t beautiful before.

But it is. It has became that. Not because of hardship, but because of the journey.

• Please remember to vote in the midterms.

• Please remember your own worth.

• Please reach for joy.

• Read. (Go to the library!)

• Drink water. Eat food. Take your meds.