Author: sincerely

Dear Stuffed Aslan,

When my aunt gave you to me as a birthday present, I was thrilled. For a toy you were actually the perfect embodiment of what I pictured Aslan to look like. I don’t know, actually, if you were created as Aslan or if you were just a toy lion, but you were chosen because you looked like the character from the books and that’s how I always thought of you.

You were big enough to fill my arms, to rest a head on. You looked fierce though, so not just a cuddly toy. You were the Great Lion.

I don’t remember when I packed you away. That seems an indignity – I’m sorry. Maybe the other dolls and bears and whatnot recognized your royalty and put you in charge? Also I don’t remember when books stopped making me feel the way they once did.

Anyway. Your mane was so soft. I will always love my aunt for understanding how much I loved you.

-e.

Dear Red Track Shorts with the White Stripe,

I saw my niece and nephew today wearing shorts and they were so happy to have their knees free! I thought of you – you made me feel that happy. I remember summer mornings when I would wake up and feel the hazy heat of the day already gathering. I would swing my legs over the side of the bed, pull you off the floor and onto my hips and be ready to go. My day had started. I was ready to run, to sit in the dirt, to play, to chase down a friend – whatever was needed. The simplicity of it, of you! The confidence I felt! Seven years old and I had no doubts about my rightness in the world or my right to wear whatever I goddamn pleased for every day of my life.

I also remember once I sat in silly putty when I was wearing you. Sorry about that. I panicked a little because the baby sitter didn’t seem to know how to get the putty out of the fabric. Also I was mainly worried about my mom getting mad rather than your welfare, Shorts. Sorry about that too.

I hope that you are helping somebody run and play and explore in that big summer vacation in the sky.

Miss you,

-e.

Dear Giant Cape Cod House,

We only knew each other for scattered weekends over two summers, but you have become in my mind The House. You are the place where all the ghosts live. (They’re jumping off your dock and playing croquet on the lawn. They’re limping on your crushed gravel walk, they’re awaiting the diagnosis, they’re recovering in the sunroom. They’re reading Rosamunde Pilcher in a deck chair, exploring the carriage house in pairs, jostling and joking in the kitchen. They’re confused in your splendor, whispering “how lucky?”)

You are the shape of my memory palace. You are the setting for the stories that swirl in my chest like smelly vapor from a magician’s smoke machine.

I really did love your sunroom. Even if you were the place where it all started to unravel, I remember that room with uncomplicated tenderness.

Get out of my head you beautiful ruin,

-e.

Dear Cassette of R.E.M.’s Reckoning Album,

I’ve been remembering all the times we walked home from school together with our trusted friend Sony Walkman. I can still picture that walk with such clarity. There was a stretch after you turned left at the Armory and the road dips down between a stand of trees and some apartment buildings and the air was always cool and damp, like a small, separate climate, before we had to take the brave step into the tunnel.

Out on the other side of the tunnel was all bleached white retaining wall and busy street, before the steep climb up the hill to home.

That little cool half-block, like a sweet drink of water on a hot day, has stayed with me. It would be hard for me to find it now, it would look different of course, but how many days did we just linger there for a minute, Cassette, with that most perfect music soothing all that needed soothing, before stepping into the tunnel?

Middle school, Cassette, am I right?

I don’t know if I ever told you this but I sometimes fantasized about a car pulling up alongside me on my walk home and Michael Stipe sticking his head out of the car (I don’t think he wouldn’t be driving. Who would? Maybe Peter?) and saying something like hey, we notice you are listening to our music – and you seem really cool, want to hang out with us? But he wouldn’t really have to say much, because we would get each other instantly. And I would spend the day with R.E.M. and we would all be really, really great friends.

Do you remember how I could turn you over to play the other side while I was walking?

I think “Finest Worksong” is still my favorite.

Thanks for the company,

-e.

Dear Hillside Ave,

Remember that time I rode my bike up your hill and when I went into the house no one cared how out of breath I was? That was lame.

Remember when my sister, our friends and I rode our bikes down your hill and scared the piss out of ourselves? That was awesome.

Remember how I used to run back along you from the bus stop if I had gotten into a fight with my parents and I absolutely needed (needed!) to make it up with them before the school bus came in the morning?

I miss those days, miss you.

-e.

Dear Photo of My Grandmother in Which She Scratched Out Her Own Face,

You lived in a shoebox on the top shelf of my grandmother’s closet in the senior living apartment. One day my sister and I were visiting her there and she brought the whole box down and while the box was full, you were the one I remember, Photo.

You held both her and her sister, you captured a moment in which they were young women standing on a sunny doorstep somewhere in Boston. The sun slanted in a little too strongly – am I getting this right, Photo? – and long before that moment in her tiny apartment, maybe just after you were snapped, she had taken a pin and scratched out her own face. When she saw you she ran her arthritic finger over your bald patch and said, “I did that,” before moving on to the next.

Did it hurt, Photo? Maybe not so much in nerve endings but in betrayal? Do you feel a kinship with your subjects, a protective responsibility for their image, do you cringe when they can’t even look at their own face? Does a photo feel shame or grief when people can’t bear to look at them and turn them to a wall or a tabletop? Do you wish people could just appreciate the truth of what you show, own the moment for better or for worse?

Most importantly, can you tell me why she did that? Was it the moment she hated, was it a memory, was it the photographer, was it something she saw in her face? Do all people go through a period when their face repulses them? Do all women? All women I know, all women who share my last name?

I should have asked her at the time, though I doubt she would have told me. I don’t know where you went, Photo. I don’t know where any of your kind went. I would have loved to have you. I would put you in a beautiful box and keep the box somewhere safe.

Stay mysterious,

-e.

To the Maroon Snap Blankets That Lived On Our Couch for 20 Years,

You lived with us through so much. I remember when we got you both, as a gift, at one of the big family celebrations at Christmas. Those were so fun, so lively. So many jokers in one room. My mom and dad snapped you together into the giant onesie suits that you were designed to transform into – snaps at the wrists, ankles and head (to make a hood) – and then they zipped up the thick, black zipper to close themselves in. They waddled around. We all laughed.

I don’t mean to insult you, Blankets, but do you know if you were you a gag gift? I kind of always wondered. Doesn’t matter where we start in life, though, does it? It’s about the relationships you form along the way. That’s what I always believed.

You didn’t get snapped together all that often, I know, but you were very useful as blankets on the couch in our den. I remember one day I was home sick and my dad decided I needed some air so he bundled me up in one of you and put me in the front seat of his grey Buick sedan. We stopped by the mailbox and somewhere else: I don’t remember. What I do remember is the sun was bright and the sky was blue and I was disoriented from having been lying in front of the TV all day. I loved driving with my dad, but he kept looking at me out the corner of his eye. At one point he looked at me and asked me why I was sitting forward like that and I said I don’t know, why? He shrugged. “Just wanted to make sure you were feeling OK,” he said. But why am I telling you, Blankets? One of you was there. It’s just funny the things you remember. The things you look back on to try to puzzle meaning out of. He was probably afraid I was going to puke in his car.

And you survived so many years of being spare blankets, shoved down in the crevices of the couch, crumbs worked into your polyester fibers, your cotton batting getting frizzed through small rips. So many movies, so many TV shows we watched together. There was a time when my dad spent all day in that den with you – and then we just moved the hospital bed in – I bet you were called on a lot then. Or were you folded neatly and stored? Either way, you saw a lot, Blankets.

And then only one of us was left in that house. But you know that, Blankets. You were needed once again for evenings in an old, drafty house. Did you know how big that house must have seemed? Did you, through thoughtful concentration, gather your weight together to imitate the feel of an arm around a shoulder, one leg resting next to another? When it was time for bed you were left on the couch like a shed cocoon. You sat. Did you sigh?

I wonder what became of you? Did you land in a Goodwill somewhere, move on to a pet’s crate?

Are you still together? It’s hard to think of family being separated.

There was so much waiting. Witnessing. Your embraces never demanded anything in return.

Thank you,
-e.