Dear Forest Green Mock Turtleneck Raglan Sleeve Sweater from J.Crew,
Or the Gap? I don’t know. All I know is I borrowed you out of necessity and then when I put you on you were a revelation. I had never before or since felt as right in a sweater. And believe me, I have been looking.
L let me borrow you when we were both traveling and my luggage got lost? or we were traveling together that summer and I didn’t bring the right clothes? Or I just needed a sweater because we were both home on school break and that’s what sisters do when they are together, they loan each other clothes, even if one of them has long monkey arms so her wrists stick out of every sleeve and she also has worse taste in clothes and so is never lending, always borrowing (or trying to borrow, with her too-long arms and feet), even though she is older and this seems backward.
I have a mental picture of an actual picture of the three of us (you, me, my sister) standing in our grandmother’s garden and my sister and I are exchanging sly, fond looks because that is what being there was like – alliances, shared inside jokes, intense boredom, pleasure at being photographed, but also feigned irritation. How silly, our eyes say, we are just standing here, why photograph us? We are just existing in this moment, one that will never happen again, but also one that is similar to a long procession of moments that seem to crush us beneath their weight. I always imagine those illustrations: if you stacked one gazillion paperclips end to end they would reach from here to the moon – well, what’s at the bottom of that tower of paperclips? Two girls trapped in time, in endless meals and searching the newspaper for the TV schedule to find the American shows. In “walks” around the yard.
We would never be that young/old again, our optimism and celebration of being celebrated was soon to expire. Soon, no one would really be very interested in capturing our overlapping existence in a garden. Two girls, missing each other at school, or traveling together for a couple of weeks, or just there together, maybe sharing clothes from the Gap or J.Crew or maybe not, it’s all so hazy. All those times are layered in my mind, THEY are the paperclips in the stack, pinning down a feeling, pinning a ghost of myself to that place in time.
In any case, Forest Green, you were beautiful and I’ve been trying to find your equal ever since.
Miss you,
-e.