Category: 100 day project

Dear Umbrella Stroller,

You carried me everywhere on that trip to Norway when I was so small. Even in the May 17 parade. I don’t remember it but I’ve seen pictures and I like how I traveled close to the ground but also sort of wrapped in the shadow of whoever was pushing me. Usually it was my mother, walking me into the world, her world.

Why in pictures from that time does the sun always look so fierce? We all looked golden from it like the devoted at the feet of a golden statue. We are all squinting. Was it really like that, Umbrella Stroller? Was it a different sun that shone down on us May 17 40-some years ago?

If you were here maybe we could talk all about it.

Hurra 17.Mai!

-e.

Dear Russian Rolling Ring I Threw in the Charles River,

I still miss you. I don’t know why I did it. (Well, I do, but it’s a strange and unsatisfactory reason. Kind of the same reason I threw that tomato the other day.) I’ve thought of buying another but it was WHERE I bought you and who I was then, you know?

So sorry, it was a weird evening,

-e.

Dear Dining Room in the House on Belmont Street Circa 1981,

When I have dreams of flying, I am always flying at that house, around the yard in big, swooping circles, just missing the fence and then up, up and back down to the front door and around and I’m sure this is why:

When I was young I was convinced that I arranged the chairs in a circle around the outer wall of the dining room and jumped from chair to chair while flapping my arms and could do it fast enough, that I would eventually take flight. I knew it. I could feel it. I could feel exactly how my heart and tummy would feel when I took to the air. I could hear my mother in the kitchen making dinner. I had to avoid the stereo in one corner. My sister was little and I tried to get her to join me but she was too small. In fact, I was too small – I couldn’t even jump from chair to chair. But I tried. I stretched my legs a little farther each time. That was a key part of it – you had to want it bad enough. Your need for flight would stretch your body and help it gain momentum until the air lifted you like it would a balloon.

Why you? Why were you the place I knew I could fly? Dunno. Maybe you were on a specific ley line? I can’t imagine you still exist in the same formation you did all those years ago, but I’d like to imagine that if I found myself in your space, even if you are now part of an eat-in kitchen or a family room, or a master bedroom addition, that I would be able to once again feel what I once felt – that utter conviction that I could conquer gravity. That I would feel the change in the air that means impossible is possible, that the ground and the sky can interchange, that the yearning of my soul can be translated into movement, a flapping of arms that would lift my heart up until it grew, light and sparkling like a soap bubble.

-e.

Dear The Limited Circa 1988,

I don’t really know what you’ve been up to lately. I know there was that whole Structure spin-off in the 90s, The Limited Too, and maybe a lingerie store? but after that I kind of lost track. I feel like recently I walked past your window and there were a lot – like a LOT – of rayon blouses? Seemed a little bleak, tbh.

But anyway, I’ve always wanted to thank you for 30 years ago providing a fall wardrobe that, in walking a line between bohemian and mainstream, happened to be absolutely perfect for a girl searching for a persona and about to enter grade 7 at Central Middle School. It was also, thank you thank you, clothes that my mother thought looked nice (the color coordination worked a miracle here) and she bought me not just one but two full outfits – the baggy bottom pants, the loose weave oversized cotton sweaters – that won me at least three compliments on the first week of school. My best friend of course told me I looked awesome – that is the role of best friend and we complimented each other relentlessly throughout all of middle school thank god for her – but other people also said I looked awesome, which, for a girl with an unflattering perm, braces and an unsteady application of neon-blue mascara, was nothing short of a small miracle.

Walking into school that first day I thought I had finally found my style and I knew exactly how I would dress forever.

And while in reality I’m still looking for my style – and maybe also, I’ll be honest, my persona – it’s still a nice memory. Every time I think of you, The Limited, I think of you fondly.

Thanks for helping me be stylish for one hot minute,

-e.

Dear Hard Rock Cafe Boston,

You were so freaking cool. I ordered a burger and a chocolate milkshake (there were chocolate jimmies in the BOTTOM of the glass) every time and it was super loud in there and walking to the restrooms down the stairs and past all the memorabilia was a freaking pilgrimage and so rock n roll and I loved it all. I had one of your t-shirts. I wore it with my cut off jeans and I. Looked. Cool.

There were few moments from that time in my life when I felt cool, but going to visit you – with my sister and my parents, no less – I did, and for that I want to thank you.

Rock on,

-e.

Dear CD Player with the Tape Deck Adapter,

I don’t imagine you exist any more. That’s harsh to say, but it’s true. Then again, my son has the boombox from my own young days in his room. And my daughter has a CD player I found at a yard sale for $5. Both come in handy – the library still lends out CDs. We still have a stack of our own somewhere.

So, when I’m feeling my most hopeful I think there is a chance that you are out there somewhere, still spinning sweet tunes. Or maybe an audiobook.

It was the adapter that helped you work your magic for me, turning the interior of my manual transmission, no AC, four door Saturn SL into an oasis.

At 5 p.m. I could get into my little white car and let tracks 1, 4, 8 and 9 of Dolly Parton’s The Grass is Blue carry me from work to the precious, brown-linoleumed little apartment with the plants in pots on the driveway.

Thank you for giving me music,

-e.

To the Perfume Locket Necklace We Got from our Great Aunt,

You were beautiful. And the solid perfume inside you was only half scooped out. Even if our parents thought you smelled bad and didn’t want us to put the perfume on our necks – we did anyway. And just like magic we were changed from small girls to glamorous grown up ladies.

I don’t know where you disappeared to. It’s a mystery.

-e.

Dear Giant Cape Cod House,

I wrote to you recently and you were on my mind – who am I kidding you are always somewhere in the back of my mind – and then I was walking home from the park with the kids and decided to FaceTime my mom and as we were walking there was a small library and we stopped to peek inside and the Shellseekers was there (remember all the Rosamunde Pilcher? I mentioned it in my last letter) and I showed my mom and we both said “Oh, look at that!” and I said those pastel covers always remind me of you and my mom said her too and then she said “You remember that house burned down.”

Burned down.

And then she retold me the story and I remembered she had already told me this. And I had forgotten it. She had gone to look for you once when she was on the Cape, thought she’d just like to drive by you and see you one more time, and she couldn’t find you and later she heard that there had been a fire and you were gone.

She may even have told me this more than once. I wonder how many times she’ll have to tell me before it stays remembered? But I’ve rebuilt you in my mind at least once, maybe twice, and then my memory has to be burned all over again.

And I guess I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry you went down in a fire. Also, that seems absolutely effing appropriate. Like something out of a Pilcher novel. But in that novel you would have been rebuilt. By a rogueish handyman with a complicated past.

Anyway! I also wanted to ask, since you are mostly made of dream vapor and maintained by ghosts anyway, every time I have to reburn you in my memory, does it hurt? If so, I’m sorry.

I wish I could say I’ll remember this time but I can’t promise anything. That sh*t is complicated.

See you. Or, I guess, not.

-e.

To the Soft Serve Ice Cream Machine and Cereal Wall at the College Dining Hall,

You both were a revelation. Thank you for helping me when I couldn’t face the social anxiety of another meal. You pulled me through the door more than once.

And if I developed an unhealthy dependence on you, well, I’m sorry but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

Thanks for being there,

-e.

Dear Grey Faux Velvet Easy Chair That We Donated to the Church Youth Group Room,

I’ve never felt completely right about how things ended between you and our family.

Everyone thought it was so cool of us to donate you. Truth is – and I hate to even write this to you, but I think you know it already – they were doing us a favor by accepting you. All the hours you spent with our dad when he was sick should have won you our loyalty.

Instead, when J asked if it was OK for him to sit on you during youth group or did one of us want to … I shuddered. I was sure I would be able to feel the sickness crawling off your fuzzy skin. I didn’t know why he couldn’t.

I don’t know where you went from there, Grey Faux. Hope it was somewhere you could be loved. Where you could leave your history in the past and start fresh.

You served my dad well. Maybe we should have treated you differently. Not left you in a room where you would be alone 95% of the week. I’m sorry. If you ever need anything, I hope you know you only have to ask.

-e.