Talismans

Three objects I keep on me. None has a battery. Each is a small feat of engineering, and a person I come from.

The watch

My grandfather's. A few hundred parts, a wound spring, a case sealed against pressures no one will ever dive to. It asks nothing of me and it will outlast me. It clicks forward whether I look at it or not.

The pen

My mother's. A nib worn to the angle of a hand, ink drawn up by capillary action, a reservoir filled from a bottle. It writes in green, and it is slower than a keyboard — which is the point. The hand sets the pace; the thought keeps up.

The camera

My father's. He taught me on trails in the Alps, him with the good body, me with the spare. A rangefinder: mechanical shutter, a patch of light in the finder, no screen, thirty-six frames and then you stop. You don't take a photograph with it. You wait, and you receive one.