I Am Finally Free to Remember: A Museum
After she divorced and lost much of her inheritance, after being hospitalized twice, after she left Los Angeles and moved southwest to Santa Fe, after she gave up on the academic job market, after she amassed enough literary respect to profit from in-home workshops but not enough literary respect to find a new agent or publish with a Big Five, after she quit heroin and coke, after upstate New York and the townhouse in San Francisco, walking barefoot on Fisherman’s Wharf and searching for a familiar landscape, after she published eleven books, but before she died in late 2019, Kate Braverman got her roof redone. The services cost nearly fourteen thousand dollars. She moved a year and a half later.
I’m writing a book about a dead feminist drug addicted brilliant poet from Los Angeles, I tell my students, and her roofing receipts and financial paperwork have been my new fixation as of late. In class, we’re reading Leslie Jamison’s essay “Museum of Broken Hearts”, where she journeys through a museum dedicated to breakups in Zagreb, and imagines her own beginnings and endings. For her, the trip is about witnessing. In the museum, people donate items like positive pregnancy sticks and axes, wooden toilet paper rolls and strands of hair from a lost lover—everything is a relic, and everything is an artifact. “Strangers wanted their lives witnessed and other strangers wanted to witness them,” Jamison writes.
I ask my students about the museums they’ve visited, anywhere in the world. They name a few: the Phoenix Art Museum, the Museum of Miniatures in Tucson, the Hammer museum in Los Angeles. Someone describes the beautiful brutality of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I talk about the Transit Museum in New York City, constructed inside an abandoned Subway station on Court Street. We talk about how, once you pay attention, once you wake up to the world, everything becomes a type of museum. Even the termites crawling out of my wall at the end of southern Arizona’s triple digit temperature days, even a rock from a stranger, a pickle lighter, an old tennis dampener and a pair of beat up soccer cleats, begins to glisten and sway. I have noticed similar things about archives.
By institutional measures, I would be a terrible archivist, because I want to keep everything, because I care just as much about roofing receipts as I do unpublished poems. I know, intellectually, a Special Collections archive will toss roofing receipts during an appraisal process, if the Braverman archive, on an academic institutional level ever sees the light of day. But I’m interested in Braverman beyond an academic and institutional level. I’m interested in the way a special collections archive frames her life, but I understand, now, that said framing is only a version of her life. Lecturing about a person’s archive, the scholar Domonique Luster reminds us that a person’s history is not “their whole life, just backwards.” A person’s archival history, on an institutional level is, rather, “a series of strategically recorded decisions.” This is why I love the idea of a museum we—owners of our own history—are allowed to curate. Jamison sees that too, I think. “[The Museum of Broken Relationships],” she writes “recognizes our relationships to the past—even its ruptures and betrayals—is often more vexed, that it holds gravity and repulsion at once.”
When I was younger, first finding my way into the essay, a teacher gave me Jamison’s work, and her words excavated, and then surfaced an agony inside me so deep, I had thought my entire life I shared it with nobody. I couldn’t articulate it then, but now, I think it is a preoccupation with iterary ancestry, and what continues to exist beyond the page, beyond history. We shared the compulsion, the primal agony, to remember. At that point in my life, so afraid I might forget, I kept a detailed journal of everything I did on a daily basis. Forget about what, I was not sure. That was the point. How could I know what I needed to remember? How could I put anything down? Now, teaching university students myself, I share Jamison’s essay with my students, and I see the way they both ache to remember and shy away from truth and its difficult narratives at the same time. I am trying to teach them that creative nonfiction aches for the same thing—the difficult, buried narratives that only they can excavate and articulate. The meaning in the mundane.
Kate Braverman grappled with remembering, too. She told her students to look everywhere for signs of life—down abandoned alleyways, landscapes lit up by the rising sun, the garbage on the side of the road in Los Angeles. When she applied for a Guggenheim grant in 2012, she wrote this:
I have spent precisely 30 years in service to the word, to the poem, the short story and the novel. I return with astonished refreshment to California and the perspective that survival, intuition and experiment, solitude, therapy, teaching, travel, marriage, and child rearing have given me. There is no silence, only the waves, the ravenous gulls, the agitated sky, and the graffiti of the stucco walls I read and translate as my first language. I am finally free to forget. But, more importantly, I am finally free to remember.
Braverman didn’t get the grant. She was never awarded another grant in her lifetime, but that’s the least important part of this story. What matters is that I think about her words while I do dishes, bike to campus, boil water for coffee in the morning. I wonder, what does it mean to choose to remember?
“Anyone’s story,” Jamison writes of the Museum of Broken Relationships, “was worth telling, worth listening to.” I want to teach my students that their stories are important, their stories are meaningful. I am trying to give myself this permission for Kate Braverman. People ask me often why she matters. Sometimes maliciously. Most often benevolently. Because she was brilliant and under celebrated, I want to say. Because she was a person, I want to say. Isn’t that enough? Sometimes I envy the archives of artists with undeniable literary merit—David Foster Wallace at UT Austin, Raymond Carver and Vladimir Nabokov and Joan Didion, the latter whose archive the New York City Public Library purchased for nearly 2 million dollars less than a year after she died. These are the artists for whom the question of whether or not they matter is already answered.
But is that even true? By historical measures, the archive as we know it was never intended to serve artists. In fact, the archive was never intended to serve anyone beyond monarchies and churches and other governing bodies. It was created, in other words, to uphold the very power structures Braverman, in her angry, Jewish, feminist, working-class poems and stories, sought to dismantle. In whatever capacity her university archive is established, if it is established at all, her institutional papers will never be sufficient. Since a full history is largely achievable, I am trying to look toward archives beyond traditional institutions. Community stories. Roofing receipts. Ghosts. Witnessing.
When I send my students back to their apartments and dorm rooms with orders to write their own exhibits for homework—after Jamison’s essay—I tell them that their exhibits don’t have to be about heartbreak necessarily. What I really want them to do is make a conscious choice to remember. What does that mean, a student asks me in earnest. Whatever feels true to you, I say, will be meaningful to me, because that’s the best answer I can give. It is the only answer I can give.
Exhibit 1: Tennis Racket Dampener
Tucson, Arizona
For those who don’t know, it is a plastic piece that many players will put on their tennis racket to reduce the vibrations. While I no longer play tennis and I have lots of other racket dampeners, there is one that I will never throw away, I instead keep it in a box in my room filled with mementos from my past. This racket dampener means a lot to me because of the person who gave it to me. It was my first girlfriend who gave it to me. I met my ex girlfriend through tennis. After missing our sophomore year tennis season due to COVID, we began playing tennis together at least once or twice a week. When my racket dampener broke while playing one day, she gave me an extra one she had in her bag. It is heart-shaped and has sparkles on it, and while I didn’t initially like it, I ended up playing with it for a couple of months. This racket dampener means a lot to me as it is one of the only items I have kept from this relationship. It reminds me of tennis, and her, and I like keeping it as a way to remember and honor how much those two things meant to me.
Exhibit 2: ‘M’ Pendant Necklace
San Diego, California
It is a typical necklace: a simple gold chain, with an M pendent that has tiny little details on the M. The necklace was the first thing I got out shopping with my mother one day and it was something so simple yet so meaningful. I always looked up to my momma as my beautiful angel and bestfriend. She had always layered her dainty gold jewelry inspiring me to want to do the same as my momma. Like mother like daughter, it really came into play with me and my momma: we are best friends that are inseparable. She bought me my first two layer necklaces one just like hers but adding an M pendent. As my mommas name is Megan and mine is Madi, we twinned with the Ms getting her to get us the M pendants for each other. The dainty gold necklace was something that we could always wear to connect us in away when we couldn’t be together. The necklace held our hearts together allowing us to carry them with wherever we go. Now being at college and 420 miles away from my momma this necklace gives me the feel of my momma with me no matter the distance. With there being distance, hard days, moments of needed reminders I am loved. I have this necklace that I wear everyday with me knowing im never alone. I give it a touch every morning as if I can send my love to my momma through it. This piece allows me to gain emotions of joy and the feel of home.
Exhibit 3: The Glass Turtle
When I was around five years old, me and my family, (sister, brother, mom and dad: my youngest brother hadn’t been born yet) all went to Florida for a vacation. We stayed on the soft white sandy beaches of Marco Island and visited my second cousins who lived five miles away from the beautiful resort. I was happily building sand castles and getting it in every crevice of my body. The blazing sun and the reflection of the bright azure sea was a stark difference from the yellow walls of my grandparents’ house. The sun was beating down on my skin and the cool water helped with the sticky humidity.The dark hallways and air conditioned house all seemed like a fever dream now. I remember watching my parents laugh together. It brought a smile to my face knowing that they were once again together. However somehow that joy slipped away and slowly folded and churned into irritation and deep holded anger.
The last night at the resort, with the high ceilings and orange lights that reminded me of Mrs. Cash’s classroom, my dad came to tuck me into bed. This was not a part of my everyday routine since my mom was my main caregiver and always read us stories before bed. I remember he hesitantly walked into the room to make sure I was still awake, my sister had already fallen asleep, and when his eyes landed on me, a smile abrupted on my face. I laid back into my bed and watched him as he tucked the covers tightly around my sister and I but not before handing me my favorite stuffed animal, a pug. But in his hand was something special. It was a tiny turtle probably a little bigger than a blueberry. It had a green back and little scales just like a real turtle. My dad told me to keep it warm and safe because soon it would turn into a real one as long as I didn’t break it. Looking back I realize how many empty promises he gave me and how much better I would’ve been without any words. He smiled down gently and I could see his pearly whites illuminate in the orange hue above. He looked like a god to me, untouchable and undefeatable. The earthy scent of his shaving ointment filled my nostrils accompanied by the bar
soap he always used to clean himself. His big brown eyes reflected a kind of sorrow I had never seen before and I looked back curiously, a question at the tip of my tongue. Too bad I never got the chance to ask him about it. Nevertheless, he kissed my forehead softly. His deep voice vibrated the bed beneath me as he said “Keep it safe for me, will you?”
I nodded my head oblivious to the underlying message he was trying to convey.
The next morning he was gone and I didn’t see him again for five years.
My father made my world spin, he was the sun rising over the mountains and never did I
ever think that he would one day set in the west. When he left I was in the dark with no light at all. Afterall he was the sun and what do you do when the sun leaves the sky? The answer: you go to bed.
Exhibit 4: Soccer Cleats
A pair of weathered soccer cleats their scuffed leather showing the countless hours of play, work, and practice put in. Each scratch and mark tells a different story, ups and downs, growth and development. A symbol of my introduction to the world of soccer, now representing my journey as a person. One particular scar etched on the left cleat holds a story of how soccer has shaped me. As I was running down the field, with the ball at my feet, and the crowd cheering. Suddenly, a collision with an opponent's cleats sent a searing pain through my left foot. Ignoring the discomfort, I managed to strike the ball with precision, scoring a goal. That scar remains a symbol of my resilience and determination. But like all good things, this one too has to come to an end. The cleats once snug and reliable, began to pinch as my feet quickly outgrew them. As I reluctantly got a new pair I still keep the old one as a symbol of my earliest aspirations and experiences.
Exhibit 5: Pearl Necklace
Casa Grande, Arizona
I was eight years old, in the third grade. Everything was going well, at the school I had gone to, I lived in Casa Grande, I hadn’t moved back to Tucson yet, which I wish I had to be closer to my family and spend more time with them. My Nanita was my favorite person in the whole world, she was my everything, the most beautiful, kindest soul you could ever meet. She had this pigmented pearl necklace with pink, blue and purple colored pearls on it, it was so beautiful and very fragile, something you would want to take very care of because of how old it was at the same time. My mom had told me she had gotten very sick, and I knew she was to, but they didn’t want to tell me because of how close me and her were, Even though I was so young I still went through stuff and had tough times, and she was my person I would go to, to talk to about everything. The day I had gone to see her, my whole family was there, I knew she wasn’t doing any good because everyone was crying, I walked into her room and held her hand, she looked at me and gave me that look that everything was going to be okay even if she wasn’t going to be here anymore, then in my other hand she grabbed it and out the pearl necklace in it, telling me to keep it and to never lose it ,because it was her giving me a peace of her to me, making sure that she would be there with me everywhere I went especially when I would be having hard times. Till this day, I have the necklace, I don't wear it because of how old and fragile it is and I am scared to break it or it fall off and me not know, so instead I got her birth date tattooed with a butterfly on my leg in the color purple, which was also her favorite color, because she would always wear the color purple everywhere she would be, so this item right here I would put in the museum to show everyone how beautiful it is and that the kindest lady in the whole world has given it to me and I made a promise to never lose it, not one single day in my entire life.
Exhibit 6: Four Leaf Clover Necklace
I grew up in a split household, but lived mostly with my mother. When I was 5 my father got married to a new woman, my stepmother Sue. With that came a whole new branch of family for me. I gained more grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Some holidays the whole family would get together at my step grandpa’s home, usually Christmas, and every year I would watch my other cousins each open a specially picked out gift from Grandpa Ed, but I never received one. These gifts were deeply personal and only meant anything to the person receiving it. It always made me feel even more like an outsider, like I wasn’t really part of the family. Grandpa Ed didn’t truly know me so he couldn’t have gotten me a special gift even if he wanted to. I felt this way for years, constantly showing up to family events feeling pushed aside. It felt pointless for me to even go anymore. At a family get together for my nephew’s birthday my entire step family was there and I convinced my mom to come with me. This was something I did a lot because if my mom was there at least I wouldn’t feel so alone. At this particular event my mom ended up sitting at a table with Grandpa Ed for hours just talking. While talking to my mom he finally got to know me a little more and realized I could be a part of the family too. The next Christmas I got to Grandpa Ed’s and it was time to open our special presents, but this year I finally received one of my own. I carefully unwrapped the paper and pulled out a wooden box and opened it up. There was a small cloth bag and inside was a necklace with a four leaf clover. At the time this gift didn’t really mean anything special to me. Everyone else got these deeply significant gifts and I just got a four leaf clover, but I didn’t care because I finally had gotten a gift. That gift symbolized me being welcomed into the family for the first time. I was no longer an outsider or someone to be ignored; my presence was valued. Over time I learned the deeper significance of that gift; Grandpa Ed thought I was special and one of a kind, just like a four leaf clover. Grandpa Ed has passed away now, but before he passed he would tell anyone who would listen that his granddaughter was one beautiful and smart human being who could accomplish anything.
Exhibit 7: The Pickle Lighter
I'm not sure where the pickle lighter started but I know it was a pack of three. My friends used these 3 lighters religiously, each one burning out after the other but we would just buy more. All of junior and senior year these pickle lighters were an unconscious practice. Having a pickle lighter in your possession was a code of honor. They rotated our friend group 3 at a time until there was 1 left. No one felt the need to buy another one because they knew we were burning out as well. I thought all the lighters were dead and gone until I was moving a couch cushion and found a green lighter with a big green pickle on it. I decided to use it and a couple days later the
last pickle lighter burnt out on me.
Exhibit 8: My first home run baseball
Ever since I can remember baseball and sports have been a big part of not only my life but my family’s as well. Growing up the younger brother I always looked up to my older brother, he loved baseball and my dad was always the coach. I would always come to his games and be in the dugout as the batboy and beg him to play catch with me whenever I got the chance. When I got old enough to start seriously playing baseball I took it very seriously. I wanted to show my brother how good I was and make him proud to be my brother. My dad was also my coach and when I hit my first home run, started running towards first, I remember my dad and brother jumping in excitement when I was rounding the bases and I’ve never seen my brother so proud of me. My dad went and grabbed the ball and wrote the date and “Nate's first homerun”. That wasn’t the last one I hit, but he kept everyball that ever went over the fence and put them on the shelf next to the rest of them. The ball doesn’t just prove my baseball achievements, but to me it represents how close my family and I were and how baseball just bonded us together.
Exhibit 9: Coke Lizard
The toy lizard that my friends and I bought together is a grass green and about 7 inches in length. I am still not sure to this day why exactly we call it what it is, it was just perfect. That lizard holds love, light, tears, sadness, any and all emotions. It has been through the ups and downs of friendship, losing and gaining new ones. I brought it with me to college, I like just looking at it. It brings me back to the summer, the most simple times. I can remember telling my friend we have plenty of time before summer is over. We cried so hard that last night, the lizard holds those tears. It watched us hug each other one last time, it watched as my friend pulled away in her boyfriend's car crying her eyes out. Time was always ticking but the lizard didn’t know that, he’s just an object right? He patiently waits at my windowsill looking outside at the entire world that I have to discover. Eventually I will be able to look out that window and call this place home. For now we wait together, waiting for something to happen. I was hesitant at first to let new people near it. It’s fragile, why would I want anyone but the people I trust near it? The first new person I let hold it, broke half of its tail. Why would I let someone break something so close to me? In a way though the piece of the tail that broke also let me let go of things inside of me I had accidentally brought from home. Lizards are supposed to grow back their tails, but not toy ones.
Exhibit 10: A book for a friend
A couple days before Christmas one year, my best friend Maya and I went to the mall to buy each other presents. Our favorite place to go to was always Sephora where we would do each other's makeup with all the dirty ‘try me’ samples that lined the shelves. Looking back, it’s probably why the two of us got sick so much. We would stay there for hours until we saw an angry worker coming our way and we quickly escaped before getting yelled at. I remember how fun that cold winter night was in particular. Her mom had dropped us off and left us to wreak havoc on the place. We raced down the marble halls and giggled our way into every store. We each tried to creep up on the other to see what we were going to get. At one point when we went into Claire’s, I found a necklace that I decided I was going to get Maya, until I noticed her peeking around the corner and had to angrily run after her while she laughed her way around the place. I ended up going with a sickeningly sweet hand sanitizer and case for her as we both had an obsession with Bath and Body Works at the time. I had to hide from her and sneak my way into the store so that she wouldn’t ruin the surprise. Finally after we had successfully picked out gifts, she called her mom to come pick us up. When we arrived back home I was ready to give her my present but she said she needed a minute to get hers ready. Rolling my eyes, I plopped down on her couch and picked out a T.V. show to watch, knowing this would take a while. Maya was always running late for everything. She was the type of person who I had to tell to come over two hours before any event was actually happening. What felt like days later she said she was ready. I unwrapped the gift and found a little green book lurking inside. “Why You're My Bestie” was the title. I quickly opened it up and began reading. Each page gave a reason for why we were friends. I squealed with delight and gave her a big hug. It was one of the last Christmas’ we spent together. As we got older, going to different High Schools made it harder for us to be close, and eventually we drifted apart. The pressures of growing up kept us too busy to make time for each other. I had completely forgotten about it until I found it when I was packing for college. I was cleaning out the dust and debris under my bed when I saw something bright green in the corner of my eye that caught my attention. It was the book she had given me all those years ago. I flipped through the pages, and a sad smile appeared on my face as I recalled memories from the ghost of our friendship.
Exhibit 11: Silver Golf Club
A silver old golf club that many people would overlook at first glance. Used on many cool calm Saturdays while enjoying the fresh air experienced while outdoors. The game of golf had drawn me in at a very young age. Something about the peace of being outdoors along with the time spent with my friends drew me back again and again. Just the sight of these clubs every day brought so much joy. Hundreds of hours spent practicing and perfecting my craft. The game itself was fun but the time spent together was the most precious part of it all.
Exhibit 12: Dog O’s
The big dog toy that looked like a box of Oreos labeled “Dog O’s” was her favorite toy. It came with little black stuffed Oreos that she would love to play catch with. She was always at the door when we arrived excited to smell the places we had been. With a beautiful coat that looked like she had a lion’s mane and a super fluffy bum. She was the pillar of happiness for the family. Yet in an instant, taken away, the memory pushed so far down that you almost question if you imagined Her. Yet when Her name is said a weight seems to appear on your chest reminding you of her ever-real existence. I dream of her sometimes, the thought that she is still here, wagging Her stump behind the door, but all that remains is that collar.
Exhibit 13: Splash Guard
A couple of my car friends and I sometimes find ourselves itching to drive a little faster and push our cars a little bit harder than we probably should sometimes. Well one night we decided to drive as far up this twisty mountain road as we could. We were absolutely flying through the mountains in our separate cars. We ended up driving about an hour and a half through these roads passing through a couple towns. Once we hit a dirt road we thought it was best to turn around and do the same thing on the way back. But when we went through one of these towns, we saw flashing lights behind us, so we all pulled over reluctantly. The police had us get out of our cars and search them, realizing we weren’t the kids they were looking for that night as apparently there was a big high school party being thrown in that city that night. We were somehow let off even though we damn well knew we were doing very criminal activities that night. As we were all pulling back onto the road my car BANGS into this huge rock so I immediately got out of the car to check the damage and I saw nothing on my bumper so I thought I would be fine. About 5 minutes down the road I start hearing this terrible scraping sound, so I pull over once more to see the issue. I immediately see my engine’s metal splash guard is halfway off of its screws and scraping against the ground. Keep in mind this drive took us an hour and a half if we are speeding. I had to drive back to my house for 2 and a half hours going about 25 MPH because I could not afford a spark to get in the wrong place and ignite a fire. For some reason this splash guard has always been the monumental beginning of my car journey.
Exhibit 14: Lime Green Hoodie
It's just a simple hoodie, a cute lime green color, giant and warm with the “Carhart” brand name stretched across the arm and a faded mascara stain on the left sleeve. It's not much to look at, it's worn, the inside is pilled from many washes, and it's slumpy and slouchy. To me it's so much more though. I remember that stain, how it came from wiping my mascara-streaked tears away in attempts to look strong for my dad; In attempts to hide my feelings as not to worsen his while we said goodbye to our family dog. To my very first and always memorable pet. I know I washed that hoodie but I must have forgotten about the stain that now shines brighter than the green color of the heavy fabric until a few months after that day when I pulled it out again and every feeling came rushing back. The sadness, the grief, the unspoken support between my dad and I, and the warmth it provided.
Exhibit 15: Anniversary Necklace
Throughout highschool I was in a relationship with someone for almost 4 years. He was my best friend. We did everything together, and we barely ever spent any time apart. For our first 1 year anniversary he gave me a gold necklace with a light pink stone in the middle. I wore this necklace every single day, 24/7. Throughout the years I developed an unhealthy attachment to this person and our relationship became very toxic and heartbreaking. I couldn't accept the fact that this person was pulling away, and this caused me to grasp tightly onto anything I could. The necklace became some sort of anxiety attachment, where I couldn’t take it off. In my mind I was somehow convinced that if I took that necklace off, even for just a second we would break up. I don’t know why I thought that or how it correlated, but it was a really scary thing for me at the time. After a couple years the necklace ended up breaking, and I was completely devastated. It was just a necklace but it held the importance of an entire relationship that I cared so deeply for. I went to the place where he got the necklace and they were able to put the same stone into a different setting. I wore the new necklace which held all its meaning in the stone, every single day. We ended up breaking up, but I still couldn’t even imagine taking the necklace off. It was the only thing that brought me comfort and didn't make me feel alone during such a cruel heartbreak. I liked silver jewelry better but I wore gold for years just because I was scared to lose him. A couple months ago when I was plugging in my hairdryer, the necklace got caught on the outlet and when I plugged it in , it made a huge spark and loud sound. When I looked down, the entire stone of the necklace was black and burnt. I haven’t worn it since.
Exhibit 16: A Tire Swing
There's a regular and typical boring neighborhood that is filled with cookie cutter houses. The houses aren’t identical but they all have the same design, none of them being interesting. But there sits one house with a big 32 foot tall tree in the front yard making it different. On that tree swings a rope with a tire attached to it. In that yard also sits a house and in that house lives my cousin. She lives there and the tire swing still exists, but it's never used. Growing up I would always be visiting or getting babysat by my cousin, I remember I even lived with them at some point. But the fact of the matter is that I would always be outside with my sister and my cousins kids playing on that swing. We also would just run around in the front yard getting completely dirty and hating when we would have to shower. I remember the ice cream truck always passing by and us chasing it. I remember pushing my sister on the tire. I remember we would twist the rope that held the tire and hop on, we would then let the rope go and it would unwind with us on it. We were just kids having fun outside and we never knew or thought that it would end. Now my sister and I rarely visit my cousins, even less still talk to them. To me, it feels like a breakup. You go from a routine and people caring about you for such a long period of time, to not even talking. Yes we are still together by blood but those times will never be the same and that connection will never be as strong as it once was.
Exhibit 17: Saint Christopher Necklace
We only had 3 more weeks till he was gone for two years, We have been broken up for two years which just shows how much changes in that amount of time. I went through a whole different relationship, junior and senior year of high school, all new friends and emotions. But three weeks before he left we reconnected and realized that connection was never lost. Two years ago I promised him 6 of his favorite Saint Christopher necklaces, with the agreement that he didn't remind me. The day before he left I handed him a note and a bag, he excitedly opened the bag knowing exactly what it was. “There's only 5 I wore one but then I lost it,” I said knowing I was lying. He didn't seem to mind, but that 6th necklace hidden in my glove box became one of the most important items to me. The note read something along the lines of...
After two years of being away from you when you were so close,
I promise to not forget you for the two years that we are not near.
I proved this by not forgetting the necklaces. I wanted to keep the necklace because after two years of not being together the memories did begin to fade, and I hoped and still do that seeing That necklace will remind me of the love I will never forget.
Exhibit 18: Neon Green Origami Heart
My roommate had a friend in high school that passed away. She described it as an unlikely friendship but they just worked. She described that they had inside jokes that she still “accidentally uses to this day.” Her favorite color was green so at the funeral they passed out paper origami hearts in different shades of green “ it's her heart; small enough for the palm of my hand to cradle it, but big enough to not get lost easily.” beautifully described by my roommate. She received three hearts from this funeral but only kept one. My roommate remembered her eyes vividly and they were stuck in her head for weeks after the funeral because they used to stare into each other's eyes for long periods of time. She had ocean eyes; deep blue with white splashes. They liked each other's eyes in their differences, as my roommate has brown eyes. Due to this my roommate left one at the beach. The second one was thrown on the highway, which seems confusing but it has a deeper meaning. While my roommate was driving a lifecenter van passed by her, the same organization which maddie was an organ donor too. The vans logo is a neon green heart so she reached into her wallet and threw a neon green heart out the window. She keeps the last green heart on her dresser to this day.
Exhibit 19: Elephant necklace from Thailand
Around the time I was in middle school, I had a really strong relationship with my aunt and uncle. I stayed summers with them in California for as long as I can remember. They really enjoyed traveling and planned to travel all around the world. They visited Thailand and brought back souvenirs for my entire family. I got a silver necklace with an elephant shaped charm. Elephants were my favorite animal at the time. It was a gift my uncle specifically picked out for me, which made it special. With all honesty I would not wear the necklace much because I was more of a gold jewelry girl then I ever was silver. Eventually after receiving the necklace my aunt and uncle secretly separated. I didn't find out till months later that my uncle decided to leave without notice. My family now hated him but I never did. The necklace was all I had left of him. I started to wear that necklace almost everyday. I washed it twice a week and only ever took it off when I would go to bed or when I went to events that I could possibly lose it. That necklace became special when I realized the person who gifted me the charm is now someone from the past who is no longer going to be in my life. It can be an upsetting reminder but I like to look at it as a memory of them taking a trip together, once happy, swimming in the waters of Thailand as a happy family.
Exhibit 20: Opisometer
Fiddling with the silver opisometer in my hands while my Dad gave a speech about Frank, my great grandfather who had died that year. The death had been hard on all of us and yet the one thing that he left me with was his Opisometer, nicely packaged in a leather bound case. He had used it while working for Boeing to measure distances on maps and arbitrary curved lines. At the time, I wanted to be a pilot, because that’s what he was. I had told him stories of how I would fly to China and be an international traveler. He would always say that I am capable of anything and I always have thought that this gift was to prove that anything was possible. He had started his life very poor and grown to be the head of a division at Boeing, working in China, and an amazing great grandfather to me and my brother. I still keep this as a reminder that anything is possible with the right determination.
The next year I decided I never wanted to be a pilot.
Exhibit 21: Pure Blue Blue
Kate Braverman loved blue, and she loved skies. Landscapes were as much part of her lineage as the people she was related to by blood. The end of my favorite poems of hers goes like this:
The infinite and absolute
of pure blue blue.
Depth without mercy
the drive of the tide.
I am owed this much.
I moved west having read every book Braverman ever wrote three times over, having examined every newspaper clipping that so much as mentioned her name. I’d read her unpublished poems and her master’s thesis and her aesthetic statements and her correspondences with students and agents and old friends. Bridges burned. I hung a map of Los Angeles on my wall, and when I couldn’t find her there, I looked at her roofing receipts. Which is to say, I moved west having nearly exhumed the Kate Braverman archive in its entirety. I understood, intellectually, that there were so many stories of her life—all of which would be equally true and equally wrong. I still could not see her.
But now, the west is home. I live here, adjacent to all of its wonders, and the sky is absent of cliché, I can find no sentences, so I choose words—so many of them: pure blue, absolutely blue, blue as a piece of a roof slate. Here, the sky is clear all but fifteen afternoons a year. And now—only now—she is almost real to me.
