My mom's old house has a way of always drawing me back to it. The sweet and dusty smell of the sunburned wallpaper in the rooms that tickles my nose calls upon my heart like the sirens' song, and I find myself feeling under my feet the hot pavement that leads to the gate, and then, through the garden, to this place that seems untouched by the years. In there, it's still 1980. Mom is graduating from high school, writing poems about Tito's death, drawing birds from Zivotinjsko Carstvo on cardboard, and hoping to get into med school by fall. She doesn't want to have kids. She doesn't think she'll ever get married and settle down, for that matter. My nonexistence at this point is complete and sometimes, while I'm sitting there dressed in her clothes, wearing her jewelery, and going through her books, I can't help but feel like this reign of echoes is the only place in the whole world that I could never really set foot in without becoming her.

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