We are made of memory. In our mother’s womb, cells weave replicas of our parents’ bodies: a heart, a brain, a knotwork of veins, a shelter of skin. The first breath we take, like those that will follow it, pulls particles of the past into our chest: strands of oxygen and carbon that have travelled through the lungs and leaves of centuries.
We are born into a universe we will belong to, into a planet formed by billions of years, into an ancestry drawn by generations. Fortune finds us our family. As our umbilical cord is cut, we are bound to less-visible cords that tie us to cultures, traditions and societies.
