In the winter of 2022, I lost the closest family member of mine. When I was informed one week after her death, all of my grandmother’s belongings had been burned according to tradition. Having lived far from my hometown for years, the only tokens of her that remained with me were a small pouch (荷包 in Chinese) and a bracelet she had once given me. I thought of the old photos that used to rest beneath the glass plate covering the table, or in the drawers at home. I could recall their delicately scalloped edges, but when I tried to summon the scenes they preserved, only faint, shadowy images surfaced — perhaps one of her cradling me, or another of me sitting on her lap as she gazed at me with a smile, or maybe that picture of her in a store we used to visit a lot. I kept searching in my mind, trying to weave these fragments into something whole. But the memories, weathered by time, were full of gaps and cracks, overlapping and interweaving into a web too intricate to untangle. I ached for not being able to keep those precious photos, but to my surprise, those old scenes were warmed to life by the most unreliable vessel of all — memory. Perhaps, this could be the seeds sown long ago, in those moments when we faced the camera, with such genuine and sweet smiles.