Semper Vigilans

A small May remembrance of my mother. These are the two varieties of Lily-of-the-Valley that grew in both my mother's and grandmother's yards—the normal white, and a less well-known pink version. They're in a tiny vintage glass bottle next to my mother's 1940 nursing school graduation pin, "Semper Vigilans," or "Always Watchful." This was the motto of Grace Hospital School of Nursing, which was eventually taken over by Yale. Also in the photo is an ashtray on the left, a souvenier of Freedom Land, a defunct Wild West amusement park in New York, and on the right, a few vintage hunting- and pocket-knives. In the background is my ten-year old indoor fern. They're all sitting on a piece of glass that was once the back window of a vintage family car, probably one of my great uncle's mid 1920s Buicks.