Nostalgia for a Time Traveler Like Me
A mix of longing, curiosity, and a desire to freeze time leads me on an endless voyage of yesterdays.
About six or ten or sixteen times a day I think about my mother. After all, she lives on my wrist in two gold bangles – one that was hers and one that she gave me when I graduated from high school. She had it engraved on the inside:
To Susie love, Mommie June 5, 1980
The bracelet is a continuous loop (no catch) of 24 karat gold, which means it is soft and easily dented. At this point mine is pretty dinged up, but I like that about it. I stopped wearing anything else made of gold a long time ago, but I never take the bracelet off.
Engraved, tethered.
It’s not just that she’s on my wrist. She’s in the heat and humidity of a torrid June day (it can’t be the Vineyard, it must be Washington and I must be ten years old). In the iced tea with lemons in the fridge. In a white cable-knit cotton cardigan I buttoned up to my chin the other night after the heat retreated. In the oven-fried chicken I make practically once a week. In the wooden spoon in my utensil jar. The list(s) on my desk, the thank-you cards in my top drawer. In the bathroom where hand towels are folded just so. In my toothbrush and my hairbrush for God’s sake.
