Dear Roasted Veggie Burrito with Black Beans, Gauc and Sour Cream from Boca Grande,
You were the absolute BEST dish on the menu and that summer I ate about four million of you. You were just about the only good thing about working in that place. That and learning how to make salsa. You are still my dream burrito.
Never pinto,
-e.
Dear Jean Nate After Bath Splash,
You know, it’s funny, I was just recently writing a letter to the Sherlock Holmes Audiobook Cassettes my grandmother lent us back in the 80s and while I was thinking of my grandmother I naturally thought of you. Your smell is so much a part of my memories of her. I don’t know anyone who wears you any more, but how I would love to smell you again. I bet it would slow my heart rate right down. That would be my kind of aroma therapy.
I suppose I could go to a drugstore and buy a bottle of you – are you still at drugstores these days? Maybe Amazon? You know what else is funny, Jean Nate? When I was a kid I never would have thought I could buy you at just any drug store. I mean, that gorgeous bottle with the beautiful cursive writing and the round cap! You were an After Bath Splash for goodness’ sake – I couldn’t imagine anything more grown up and decadent than you. I believed you were fa-a-ancy.
Oh, Jean Nate, I hope that didn’t come out wrong. Fancy is a state of mind, you know? I guess I just didn’t know how within reach you were. How down to earth. I didn’t know I could walk into the CVS near my house and buy you, a 3-pack of blank tapes and a tube of mentos. Maybe it all just goes to show how very much like my grandmother you really were. She was a dignified, put-together woman who didn’t need to spend a fortune to smell nice.
You will always be a part of my memories of my grandmother. I just wanted you to know.
Stay classy,
-e.
Dear Sherlock Holmes Audio Cassettes,
I remember laying in our living room, one of you on the walkman, getting lost in Victorian England while gazing out the window onto our 1980s-something suburban front yard.
You came in a big plastic box. And each time I was done with one there was the joy of going back to the box to snap it into place and unsnap the next. A literal treasure box.
You belonged to my grandmother, who was losing her eyesight and unable to read. It was the first experience I had ever had with audiobooks but it didn’t take long before I was in love – it’s a unique pleasure to have someone read you a story. Is there a German or a Japanese word for that?
Thanks for the hours of stories. Thanks for being a bridge between my grandmother and me.
Keep on telling your tales,
-e.
Dear Pink and White High Top Sneakers I Had in Fifth Grade,
I picked you out myself. Your coolness was real. You were like Converse – but not Converse. You had two separate layers so you could be styled in multiple ways, flipping the outer pink layer down almost like peeling a banana. Edgy! It was exhilarating choosing something so unusual. Could I really do this?
Remember how hot it was in D.C.? I wore you just about every day of that trip. I bet some of your soles melted into the pavement. In my opinion: worth it. I needed to look cool on that trip and you were there for me.
It wasn’t until we got back home and I was doing something at school, standing on a chair to hang a poster on the wall or something like that, when I overheard two of my classmates talk about how weird you were. They didn’t understand you, they said. What kind of sneakers were you, they asked each other.
I’m sorry I didn’t wear you much after that. I always was pretty susceptible to peer pressure.
I guess I just wanted you to know that what I felt at the beginning – my conviction that you were the best, coolest pair of shoes and that you were made for me – was real, and I never forgot.
We’ll always have D.C.,
-e.
Dear Camcorder,
Holy crap, you were awesome. I could not believe how lucky we were to have you. We could make movies! Music videos! Spoof commercials! After the piano keyboard, this was the tool we needed to fully realize our creative potential.
You saw a lot, Camcorder, I won’t pretend otherwise. A lot of creative fails. A lot of awkwardness. What can I say? The road to auteur is not always straight.
But what about that Indiana Jones spoof? That murder mystery? The Yoplait commercial? Man, we had some moments.
My kids now make movies on our iPhones. That’s cool. I feel sorry they’ll never know the comforting weight of you on their shoulder. The solid feel of your tapes in their hand. You didn’t make it too easy on us, Camcorder, I guess that’s the point. Remember the junky transitions that came with having to rewind to just the right moment but never quite making it? Ha ha ha … oh my. You held us to a high standard. It made us work harder.
Thanks for the memories,
-e.
Dear Glass Lovebirds Statue We Bought at Service Merchandise,
God, you were beautiful. And I was so proud of you. My sister and I bought you for our parents’ anniversary when we were still little. We must have had help from someone – I’m guessing a grandparent – who gave us some money and convinced our mother to let us choose something unsupervised from the home decor section.
First of all, I knew we were making a solid purchase because we bought you from Service Merchandise, one of the very best stores. The only downside about the place was that it took forever to get there and by the time we all tumbled out of the VW bus and into the parking lot I was both sleepy and nauseous. But that was OK. It was a place where the whole family could shop. They had TVs, camcorders, and Cabbage Patch dolls. They had jewelry in cases (which made it FANCY) and awesome, beautiful sculpture like you, Glass Lovebirds. They wrapped you in tissue (fanciness – confirmed!) and I almost went cross eyed with concentration as I carried you back to that VW van.
Our parents put you on the mantel and I admired you for years until you mysteriously disappeared. Strange. I used to like to trace my fingers along your etched glass wings. I know my mom thought we spent too much on you. But it was a time in my life when I had just realized something about what marriage was. Not all of it – not nearly all of it – but the decision involved. Our parents had decided to get married and have us. They had decided to create our family. I felt compelled to honor that with something beautiful, and boy did you fit the bill, Glass Lovebirds. My conviction that you were perfect was as clear as my conviction that we were a perfect family. As clear as the glass of your sweet, round chests. It was a good moment.
Thank you for being lovely,
-e.
Dear Blind Melon CD Owned by D in my Church Youth Group,
I wanted to borrow you so bad and I got my nerve up to ask D, convincing myself that all I had to do was be brave enough to ask. I was being silly, I told myself. And after thinking about it he said “no”.
I have to respect that. Even then, I got it. I was a very responsible kid and I would have taken good care of you, but back then CDs were prized possessions and he had bought you with his own money. $17.99 was not chump change. I’ll tell you, him saying no only made me want you more.
But all I wanted was to copy “No Rain” onto a mix tape. It was the only song I liked by those guys. I wasn’t about to shell out money for my own CD (sorry). Were there any other good ones, Blind Melon CD?
Oh well. Still glad I asked. Glad you were bought by someone who treasured you. Sounds like you had it made. Tee hee.
-e.
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.
Dear Pansies that Grew in My Grandmother’s Garden,
I have several pansy plants in my garden now. The flowers are purple, yellow, orange, maroon, blue. The fact that I have them is largely thanks to you all – I have always loved you but even more so because of how our grandmother let us cut your flowers when we visited her.
I was thinking about that when I deadheaded my pansies last night. I always have mixed feelings about pulling off the withered blooms. Each one seems precious and it seems cruel to break their slender stalks. But my grandmother used to let my sister and I go out into the garden with scissors and cut flowers to make small bouquets for jam jars and she would say, “The more you cut the more will bloom.” I always admire the closely lapped leaves at the base of the plant and the small, furled blooms readying to open. And I remember how it felt almost magical to go out into the flowers after dinner, when the light was looser but still not gone, and return to the living room, the coffee and the evening news, with fistfuls of pansies and the smell of outside on our skin.
I have thought of giving my own kids scissors and letting them assemble bouquets – but for whatever reason I haven’t. Maybe just like we never did that at home, it was something we did only at our grandparents’ house. It just wouldn’t be the same. The magic didn’t extend that far.
You’re long gone now, Pansies, of course. That part of the garden is gone. That’s OK.
Whenever I hang my towels outside to dry they smell just like the laundry my grandmother dried in the drying room alongside their garage. Something in the air is the same, maybe, not quite, but enough, something in the ritual. And something similar in the garden surely doesn’t hurt at all.
Thank you for making more flowers,
-e.
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.