No, really, that’s all I want, I’d insist to the traveler when they asked for my souvenir preferences. It’s not much, I know. Just a bottle of water or sand, preferably both, and tightly capped, please.

My collection was growing, so I had to box up all my books. Henceforth my bookshelf would be the primary means of display for my Ocean Spray bottles, which were filled with water from every ocean except the Arctic and the Indian. I was still waiting for one of my friends to visit those shores.

My bedroom had carpeting the color of sand and, when I was 12, I put up a border of ocean waves. I spent an entire summer searching the oversized books of nautical wallpaper samples. I was very choosy. I did not want sandpipers or lighthouses or cute tufts of long grass crowding out my water. No sailors or lifeguard chairs or crabs or swimmers. The winning border pictured strictly water, each wave curved like a finger, waiting to tap the shoulder of the next. To me it was like the infinity symbol; the waves chose never to spill their potential energy.

When I was in high school, I had a friend who traveled to France with her parents and managed to swipe me some water from Normandy Beach. She said it was no problem, but I preferred to imagine her stealing away from the tour group to complete the task. I could feel the wet sand compacting as she stooped to let the waves enter the bottle.

This was my first European water; there was no question it deserved prominence. I gave it a prime position on the top shelf, pushing Myrtle Beach, SC and Daytona Beach, FL aside. But after a month in my captivity the water began to nurture these green wisps along the bottom.

In two months’ time, the bottom fuzzed over and the color began to blacken and creep up the sides. If ghosts had entrails, I imagined this is how they’d look, moving languidly with the environment around them. In another month’s time, the entire volume turned black.

At that point I suddenly remembered what seemed to be an important fact: soldiers had died at Normandy Beach. It occurred to me that atom-sized remnants of them could very well remain, inadvertently scooped up and shipped back to me via my accomplice. It was cursed water; the soldiers knew I was displaying their diluted atoms in my bedroom. Eventually I poured that inky liquid down the big sink in the basement, where we wash out our paintbrushes and pour our turpentine.

For the rest of my water-collecting days, the waters were plain and clear — no sign of life. In secret I’d unscrew the caps and carefully dip my fingers into the room-temperature water, sometimes tasting. They tell you not to ingest saltwater but I never listened to their rules about cookie dough either. I tried to remember these places I never visited: sitting on my sand-colored carpet, dipping my fingers into Japan. I couldn’t even ruminate in more specific terms, as my brother couldn’t seem to remember where he’d taken the water from — river, lake, or ocean. Therefore it was Japan itself, nothing less. It was like pressing fingers to a map, slipping through landscapes, sightless as Genesis itself.

To be fair, I included in my collection some of the local water from Lowes Creek and the Chippewa River. Maybe I thought I was going places, and that when I was world-weary, I’d come back, stick my finger in the water and say, this is the best in the world.