72: Styrofoam Coffee Cup

My boyfriend and I spent most of the first year of our relationship sitting outside in a park or on the steps of the abandoned church near my house. When the weather was bad, we'd walk to Dunkin' Donuts to buy coffees. We'd sit across from each other, sipping the steaming liquid, holding hands across the table, and gazing into each others' eyes. When he went away to basic training and later was stationed in Germany, I avoided the store we'd frequented together because being there would remind me how much I missed him.

While he was away, Dunkin' Donuts started offering more than just Hazelnut and French Vanilla flavored coffee. They had a dozen different syrups to add to any beverage. I'd treat myself sometimes to a blueberry flavored coffee and when he was home on leave, my boyfriend ordered caramel.

To advertise the new flavors, they started printing mystical messages on the sides of the Styrofoam cups. The design included information about what personality traits you had if you liked a certain flavor and who your best matches were. Blueberry was the "mystic match" for caramel. In a long-distance relationship, I took silly signs like this as indication that we were meant to be together, that things would work out and we'd be happy when we could finally live together. As the years went by, the less I listened to and looked for these "signs," the more I noticed we weren't inseparable soul mates who never worried about argument or discord.

71: Magnet

My husband could never wait until Christmas or birthdays to open presents. When he was a kid, he'd slide a knife under the tape careful not to rip the wrapping paper, open his gifts, then re-wrap them before placing them back where he'd found them. His mother never found out and if she did it probably would have been the end of her buying gifts for him.

In the weeks leading up to any-gift-giving occasion, he would haunt me with questions trying to guess what he'd gotten. He was always eager for me to open presents early even though I preferred to wait and be surprised. We settled the disagreement on Christmas by giving each other several smaller gifts each day in the week leading up to the holiday.

For the first two years of our marriage we flew home from Georgia to spend a week in December with our families. We weren't able to establish our own holiday tradition and felt torn between who to spend time with. No one was ever happy at the end of the week and someone would always feel that we hadn't spent enough time with them. After two years of stress and chaos, we wanted to make our first Christmas together in Massachusetts special. We planned to spend the morning together alone before going to our families' houses. 

He worked the over-night shift on Christmas Eve and got home at 5:30 in the morning. He slammed his way into the house and came to wake me up like an excited child. He insisted that we open gifts before he went to sleep. For three months I had worked two jobs and twelve hour days, not counting the prep work and papers I took home nights and weekends, and was grateful to have a week to sleep in before dragging myself to the car dealership where I worked in the afternoon. I argued with him that we could wait to open gifts, but he persisted, shaking me and begging, "Come on," until I rolled out of bed and into the living room.

My eyes were barely open as I pulled the paper off the presents and watched him open his gifts. We went to sleep as soon as we were finished and when I woke up a few hours later I couldn't recall what he had given me. 

The magnet pictured above was one of the smaller presents he gave to me that year in the week leading up to December 25th. When I unwrapped the paper, saw the picture of the over-flowing laundry basket, and read the lines beneath: "Women, because this shit ain't folding itself," I threw myself backward from a seated position to the floor and laughed loud and long. I placed it on the side of the fridge by the kitchen sink where I stood to wash and dry dishes after cooking dinner every night.

After a year of working two jobs and coming home to a sink full of dirty dishes, crumbs and food left out on the kitchen table, piles of clothes strewn across the kitchen and bedroom floors, and beer bottles left in every room of the house, the magnet no longer seemed funny.  I started to confront him about his habits that first year because I was growing weary of cleaning up after him and didn't know how much longer I could sustain it.  I started working one job and he switched to working days, but the mess he left behind only got worse. He'd go to the gym every day after work and leave his soaking wet clothes all over the floor when he got home. They'd collect for weeks before he'd take them to the basement to wash and dry them. His clean clothes never made it out of the hamper unless I found and folded them.

One night, after teaching high school all morning and attending an afternoon meeting, I stopped home for dinner before having to be back at the school from 6-8 for parent-teacher night. I came in to find dirty dishes cluttering the sink, crumbs on the counter, cabinet doors left wide open, a pile of dirty clothes on the kitchen floor in front of the coffee pot, and a toilet that he'd left unflushed.  I spent most of the half-hour I had cleaning up his mess, then barely had time to shove down some salad greens before driving back to work.  As I ran the dishes in the sink under water and piled them in the drying rack I glanced over at the magnet and sighed.   I felt as dirty and discarded as the sweat-soaked jock strap lying in the middle of the kitchen floor.

When he'd come home from the gym at 9:30 at night I'd quietly tell him how worn down I was and how much I'd appreciate it if he could clean up after himself. Even putting clothes in the hamper would make a big difference, I said. Inevitably, this conversation that I repeated often in the last three years that we lived together would lead to an argument. He'd always say something about how he didn't have his own space even though his things took up the entire front room of our apartment, two large cabinets, and a giant walk-in closet. The thing he said most often was "You married me this way," as if my knowing he kept his bedroom a mess as a teenager made it acceptable for him to refuse to help out around the house as a married man.

I am not the same person I was when I first opened the magnet and threw my feet in the air like a laughing child. I no longer think that cooking dinner, doing laundry, and cleaning the house is the key to maintaining a happy marriage. I've realized that I don't need someone by my side to have a good time; in fact, I am most myself when I am among people who don't know me.  It's alone in a crowd of strangers that I can wear my hair wild, dance like I know what I'm doing, and sing as if my voice sounds strong and melodic.  I am learning to embrace the joy of accepting things as they are and not as I'd hoped they would be.

70: Red Sox Tickets

My father's hatred for the Red Sox began when he was a boy and Ted Williams did something that he found offensive.  He always routed for the Yankees, probably because they rivaled the Red Sox better than any other team. Children are impressionable and often adopt their parents' beliefs and values without question. I grew up cheering on the Yankees and my bias became even stronger after the Red Sox caused the restaurant where I was first employed to close down.

Like just about everyone else who lives in or around Boston, my husband was a Red Sox fan. It never really much mattered since we didn't watch the games together, but I was sure to get in a good dig any time the Yankees won.

A year before my husband left me I could see our marriage was failing, but I was still trying to cling to the idea that we would work things out. I thought if we went on date nights we could at least try to be happy together. The day after one of our talks that always ended in tears, I received an email from someone at work who was selling Red Sox tickets. I texted my husband and asked if he'd want to go and he agreed it would be a good time.

The day of the game I had an energy that comes only from excited anticipation. I'd never worn the lime green Red Sox t-shirt that he bought me five years prior for my twenty-first birthday.  I was sure he would have forgotten about it and was eager to surprise him by wearing it to the train station to pick him up. I stopped at Walgreens on the way home from work and bought a plain black baseball hat to wear to block the sun on the perfect 80 degree, late spring day.  I pulled out the lime green shirt from the bottom of my drawer, removed the official tag that was still hanging from the plastic piece on the collar, and pressed the wrinkles flat. It looked ridiculous on me, but I was willing to wear it because I thought that it might make my husband happy.

He was late leaving work and texted me to say that he might be working a double. I thought he might have forgotten about the game even though I'd been reminding him of it for months. He responded to say he didn't want to go anymore. I felt my body go limp with disappointment. He ended up leaving work late and insisted on walking home from the train station. I thought I'd be able to convince him to go once he got home, but he'd already made up his mind. It was Memorial Day and he was feeling the wounds of the friends he'd lost in and out of combat. I thought it might get his mind off things to go out and watch a game on a beautiful night, but he refused. I offered to do something different with him-- go out to eat or into Boston to walk around, anything except sit around the house and sulk, but he was adamant about staying home. He said something about how the Red Sox shirt didn't even fit me and went into the other room.

I went from practically skipping through the Walgreens parking lot, to wanting to break down and cry in a corner of my apartment.  Though he had good reason to be feeling upset, I couldn't help but think that the same thing would have happened if the tickets had been any other day. I knew then that our marriage wasn't going to make it much longer.

I never even took the tickets out of the envelope. They stayed between the pages of the planner in my purse for the rest of the year. Every time I opened the agenda book to write in a date the envelope would remind me of that night. At the end of the year I moved the agenda book to the bottom shelf in a closet that I rarely went in. Two years later, the agenda book and tickets were still inconspicuously taking up space in my home and heart. How freeing it is to let things go.

69: Bali Shag Receipt

In high school, my boyfriend rolled his own Bali Shag cigarettes because they were cheaper than a package of pre-made. He would sit in the back of classes before lunch, place the thin white rectangular paper on the desk, pinch tobacco between his thumb and index finger, pat it down, then lift the paper carefully up to his face. He rolled the bottom up first, flattened it back and forth against the tobacco, then curled the top down and sealed it with saliva. He'd put the rolled cigarette back in the package for lunch time. Once, his favorite history teacher called him aside after class and asked if he was rolling a joint in the back of the room. He took out the pack and showed the teacher it was just tobacco and was allowed to complete his daily ritual for the rest of the year. Ten years later, students aren't allowed outside for lunch, can't smoke on school property, and definitely don't roll their own cigarettes in class.

After months of watching the ritual, I rolled a cigarette for him. He said I did a great job, but he never asked me to do it again. His wide thumbs would always be colored yellow with nicotine and I could taste the tobacco in his kisses. After coughing and gagging in the kitchen at home where my mother, father, and brother all smoked, I didn't mind being around my boyfriend, even when he lit up in my car with the window up. After he went away to basic training, I stopped driving since I took the train to work and had no where else to go. My father would take the car out on the highway once in a while to keep it running. He found the filled ashtray, but left the burnt butts of the Camel Reds my boyfriend replaced the Bali Shag with after high school. My father thought maybe I was saving the crumpled filters for sentimental reasons.

I don't remember when I sent away for a can of Bali Shag, but my boyfriend must have been in Germany since cigarettes weren't allowed in basic training. I have no idea what would have possessed me to keep the receipt from the order, but it turned up again recently in my piles of mostly unimportant papers. The ashtray with already smoked cigarettes was emptied long ago, and recently my ex donated the car where he sat smoking for the first year of our relationship. With each object, however small it may be, I can feel one more thread of the cord holding us together falling away. Someday soon I know I will break away forever.

68: Squishy Ball

When we first began dating, my boyfriend worked for a convenience store in the city where we lived. The store was a five minute walk from where he lived and carried a variety of snack food, fresh fruits, drinks, cigarettes, and offered bill paying services and Western Union. Sometimes I would walk from my house, which was about 30 minutes away, and spend too long looking up and down through the aisles just so I could spend time with him. I remember listening in and admiring how straightforward, and often rude, he was with customers. I wished that I could be so bold, so outspoken, so careless.

One day after we'd only been together two months, I walked down to the store to surprise him and I saw him standing in the doorway talking to his ex girlfriend. I froze for a moment then strode away, faster than before, toward a nearby park. I didn't turn around to see if either of them had seen me.

Before it was converted into a new high school, the park near the store had two full baseball diamonds, a basketball court, and terraces behind it all. In high school, especially during summer vacations, I would walk the city with Pantera blaring though my head phones trying to find peace. I often made my way up on the hill to sit curled up on a stone beneath the trees. There was a small walking path nearby, but most people walked around the track further below by the baseball diamonds. The spot was a good place to go to be alone. I guess you could say that I went there to meditate before I knew what I was doing. I'd wrap my arms around my bent knees and stare out over the park, sometimes watching a softball game or the sunset. When I was feeling more grounded I'd slowly climb down from the rock and walk home.

The day I walked by and saw my boyfriend with his ex, I went to the stone beneath the trees in the park. I stopped at a convenience store first to pick up a small green first aid kid that I still carry with me in my purse. Back then, when my depression, anger, or self-deprecation became too unbearable, I coped by cutting. On the way up to the spot I picked up a sharp rock or a piece of glass, I can't remember which. Once seated, I dug the sharp edge into my skin until blood began to form. I watched it pool up and soak my skin for a while before cleaning it with antiseptic and wrapping it in a band-aid. I was always careful not to let the cuts become infected. I cried while the sun set that night, then slowly walked home. 

The next time he met me at the abandoned church near my house, I asked him about her. He said that she had come to buy cigarettes and nothing more. I didn't believe him, but didn't say as much. I told him that I had cut myself. He threatened that if I ever cut myself again he'd hurt himself so bad that I'd be sorry. I knew he was serious and even though he said it out of a place of care, it worried me. After that, I never again found release through cutting, not out of self-care, but because I was afraid of what he might do.

Not long after the day I saw them together, we were sitting in a different park when he started chain smoking and pacing. He confessed to me that he'd kissed her, that he'd cheated on me. Instead of being angry, I felt bad for him. I hugged him because he looked so worried and upset. It was as if he gained power from my reaction. I wonder if the way I sympathized with him and ignored myself would set the stage for our future together. That night he said that we shouldn't be together for a while until he could sort things out with her. I was devastated. We broke up for two weeks even though we continued talking and seeing each other.

After we got back together, he bought me the blue squishy ball at work one day. It had a plastic dolphin inside and when you squeezed the ball the dolphin would swim around the sea of blue liquid. They were popular back then, but after several children burst the balls sending toxic liquid seeping onto their skin, a lawsuit was filed and the balls disappeared from convenience stores. I kept mine in my purse for years and would take it out when I was feeling upset.

Ten years after he first gave it to me, the ball was still intact, although covered in dirt, in a bin stored at my parents' house. Inside the ball, the dolphin competed with a giant cloud of dust, dirt, or mold, it was hard to tell which. It didn't take much to throw this in the trash beneath the other objects I no longer need.

67: Address Labels

Being married to the military, I moved around a lot in a short amount of time. I found that after donating to one organization, I started receiving address labels from about five different places. In college a social psychology teacher of mine told us that it's a proven fact that people are more likely to donate when they are given address labels. As the rectangular stickers started pouring in from companies I'd never heard of and couldn't justify supporting, I guiltily pulled out the address labels and discarded the payment form. I would always use the address labels sent by the organization I had donated to first. I had hundreds of them and was never able to use them all before moving to a new address.

Less than a year after getting married, I realized that my English degree wasn't going to be the key to a career or, as I'd hoped, publishing a best-selling novel and never having to work a regular job again. When I was working in Barnes and Noble to pay for college, a customer asked me what I was majoring in. When I told him English he said, "Well, that's a road to no where." After that I vowed to myself that I wouldn't work in retail after graduation. I kept my promise to myself in part because I couldn't find a job and in part because I refused to go back to working at Barnes and Noble. I didn't want to admit that a stranger's rude comment had been accurate. Five months after moving to Georgia and being unemployed for the first time in six years, I was feeling particularly desperate and sitting at the kitchen table. I looked through the window and saw a school bus dropping off children and decided I would go back to school to become a teacher even though I'd been telling people for four years that I would never teach.

Half the teachers I met when I was completing my practicums and student teaching remarked that I looked like a student myself. It's true that I do look much younger than my age, but I like to think I carry myself with more confidence and assurance than a teenager. At least I'm a lot better off than I was when I was fifteen years ago. In an effort to seem older, I insisted on being called Mrs.. After college, I spent my first year in a long-term sub position with seniors, and the year after I was hired full-time to teach twelfth grade in another district. Some of the students who had stayed back several times weren't much younger than me and might have run into me in a bar after work if I ever went out drinking. I was very clear that they should refer to me as Mrs.. Now, a year and a half after my marriage ended, many of the teachers in the school and most of my former students still call me Mrs. and each time it's like a punch to the chest.

All of the address labels came addressed to Mrs. as well. When my husband first left me, I started using a permanent marker to black out the three letters before sending them in the mail. I completed the change of name form immediately, but it took months before I started receiving new sets with the "r" taken away.

The day my husband walked out, just before he left I said I'd check the mail to see if there was anything there for him. I came back with a thick envelope from the US Marine Corps addressed to me. He was still lingering in the kitchen even though his things were all packed in the back seat of his car, so I opened the envelope to avoid meeting his gaze, to take my mind off the tears that were fighting to spill over any second. Inside was a fresh set of Mrs. address labels as well as a Semper Fi bumper sticker. I separated out the bumper sticker, held it toward my husband and said, "Here, why don't you take this? You're always faithful." As soon as I'd said it I realized what an insult it was. Here he was, about to walk out on me after he'd been having an affair for at least several months and probably longer and I was offering him a sticker for a branch of the military he hadn't served in, with a logo that couldn't be further from describing him in terms of our marriage. "I don't need that," he said and turned to leave.

I still had the address labels the Marine Corps sent to me along with dozens of other labels from various charities, many of them for addresses I no longer lived at. After getting rid of all the Mrs. labels from where I live now, I still had three books of Ms. labels and I'm sure more will be in the mail soon.

66: Tissue Paper

I don't wear thongs. There's nothing about having a thin strip of fabric shoved between my butt cheeks that appeals to me. Sure they eliminate underwear lines, but when you have a behind like mine, they create other lines that you should be more concerned about. I've never enjoyed shopping for underwear or bras. I go to Victoria's Secret once a year, sometimes every two years, make a direct line toward the back of the store, grab several pairs of the cotton granny panties that have been 5 for $25 for years and recently became 5 for $26, walk directly to the cash register, refuse to provide my phone number or email or whatever else they want to send me coupons and catalogs that look more like porn magazines, and decline the boxy, pink, striped bag. Still, they insist on wrapping my underwear in tissue paper as if it is a gift. The only gift is getting away from the store without running into someone I know or, worse, a seeing student of mine.

I can't say I wasn't embarrassed the first time a boyfriend saw my plain-Jane white bra and full-coverage underwear. I hadn't even thought twice about something that came natural to me until he made a comment. I have since switched to black bras and sometimes even allow for lace, but thongs are just wrong.

My preference didn't stop my husband from buying me lingerie. He told me the story of how he went into Victoria's Secret the first time he bought me something. He was wearing his usual ripped jeans, old Vans skate shoes, flannel, holey band t-shirt, and baseball hat. He said he had his head phones in and music blaring and quickly told the sales associate he didn't need help that he was buying something for his wife. I could picture him perfectly when he told me the story and I wondered if the sales woman laughed at the idea that he was married. He was 20 and I was 21 when we exchanged vows, but neither of us looked our age. Recently when I was sitting in the exit row of an airplane, the stewardess asked me if I was at least fifteen years of age. Nearly double that, I laughed at the idea that I could pass for one of my high school students.

He gave me the bra and thong wrapped in the telltale pink tissue paper. If he wrapped gifts in tin foil I was lucky they were wrapped at all. The bra was too small and the underwire cut into my skin. The thong was the first one I'd ever worn and it didn't make me a convert to the open-end. I wore them infrequently because I knew he liked them and I knew that when I did wear them, they didn't stay on for long.

He bought me several other sets over the first few years of our marriage. Cleaning through my clothes was one of the first things I did when he left me and getting rid of the years of lingerie I'd kept in the far corner of my sock draw buried beneath my more practical things was freeing. When I found the folded up pink tissue paper pictured above I knew that it was the paper the first bra and thong had been wrapped in. Why had I kept this? At one point I thought it was cute that he'd gone into Victoria's Secret for me. It was nice to have someone think I was sexy enough to be scantily clad and I didn't mind the reminder. Now, it just seems like another way we both differed, another example of how I kept quiet because I knew it was something he liked.  Getting rid of the old lingerie and crumpling this pink tissue paper into a ball before throwing it in the trash was my own version of 1960s bra burning.

65: Travel Bag

I've always hated rolling suitcases. They didn't exist yet when I was growing up and airports were filled with people walking lopsided, a wide suitcase in one hand. I hate the sound of the mini-wheels rolling through airports and especially over pavement. I also hate that I have become one of those people who rolls her suitcase through the airport.

Initially, I resisted buying a suitcase with wheels. When I was planning to visit my husband in Germany I went shopping for an over-sized shoulder bag that I could move gracefully through the airport with tucked under my arm. I found the black bag above and flattened my clothes into tiny shapes to shove into every corner of every compartment. It fit fine as a carry-on in the overhead plane compartment, but during my four hour layover my image of a stylish woman sliding through the airport toward her American soldier husband soon faded. The bag straps were too short when the bag was crammed full and even my chicken arms barely fit through the opening. The handles were covered in heavy stitching and the raised leather around the edge cut into my hand and shoulder.  I alternated between slinging it over my shoulder and holding it in my hand to allow the slashes of skin to resurface and regain circulation. I honestly considered ditching it in the airport, but in the post-September 11th world of travel figured it would cause more harm than holding it.

When I got to Germany, my husband carried it for me and refused to admit how much the handles hurt his hands. I don't remember carrying it on the way back home and suspect I must have put it in checked baggage, something that I normally avoid at all costs. Despite how much I hated this bag, I kept it, the plane sticker still wrapped around the handle, in my closet. It became a home for shoes that I never wore, but wasn't yet willing to give away. The shoes inside this bag were among the first of the 24 (65) things I got rid of. With the shoes in a good-will bin, this bag was empty and taking up space in my closet. I have traveled at least once a year for the past five years and within the past five months I've been away to four places on local road trips, across the country, and internationally. Never once did I even consider bringing this bag. After the trip to Germany, I broke down and bought a set of rolling suitcases. Each time I pack the rolling bag I resolve to carry it through the airport, then usually give up halfway and realize that when you are running to make a connecting flight it just isn't practical to slow yourself down with a suitcase. I do still pack light and usually survive with just a backpack, but times when I've needed more space I've been thankful to have the option to wheel. 

64: Receipts

One thing I've noticed about allowing items to pile up in corners of my home is that it's easy for things you didn't know you had to go unnoticed.  Before I went on vacation earlier this summer, I pulled out everything from every corner and closet, every dark space in my apartment that I hadn't looked through since moving in four years ago. It was so refreshing, coming home and knowing that a reminder such as the receipts pictured here wouldn't be waiting for me the next time I went looking for something packed away. Even the sun seemed to shine brighter through the windows after I eliminated so many items.

I don't remember where these appeared, but they fell from something into the center of the floor. In an instant I was carried back to when my ex and I were still together and I'd find crumpled up receipts on the tiled kitchen floor, in the bedroom by the hamper, on top of the washing machine, or in his pants pockets when I was doing laundry. After finding out about his first affair six months after our wedding, I started unfolding the slips, pressing the creases flat, and reading the tiny black print. Toward the end of our relationship when he was home less often I started finding more receipts from bars and liquor stores. Sometimes it was clear that he had just paid for his own tab, but other times he was not alone. Even Dunkin Donuts slips were always coffee for two. I kept quiet about the receipts figuring a coffee or beer here and there wasn't much to be concerned about or at least not a reason to start an argument.

About a month before he told me he was leaving me, I found a receipt from Leominster.  He'd bought dinner for two one night in a city miles away from home. I looked at a calendar to try to trace the date from weeks before, but I couldn't remember if it was one of the nights he'd slept at the hospital where he worked. He spent so many nights away from home it was hard to remember exactly when he'd been away.

When he came home from work the day I found the receipt, I asked him what was in Leominster. The color drained from his face for a quick second before his mind made up a lie to cover himself. I could see the lie forming in his eyes and I felt my heart pounding as if it were trying to punch its way through my chest. He claimed that he was there with a friend from work-- an older guy that he talked about often and went out drinking with. He said someone had been hassling his coworker's daughter and he'd gone to threaten the man. Even if the story were true, nothing about it felt right. Why drive an hour away from where you live and work to start trouble with someone you've never met, to defend someone you don't know? And if that was what happened, how could one deliberately threaten a person, whatever it is that that meant I didn't inquire or want to know, and then sit down to a meal in a restaurant nearby?  And if he was the one "doing the favor" why had he paid for the meal? He said he hadn't told me because he knew I'd be upset.  I got the same sick feeling that I had when I found out about his first affair and it didn't dissipate for days.

Maybe he was right to be mad that I checked the receipts he left lying around the house. I don't know if it's possible to patch broken trust after someone has been dishonest. In my heart, I knew he was with someone else. I checked the receipts because I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn't just being overly-sensitive given what had happened in the past, but I also checked the receipts because I was hoping more than anything to prove that he wasn't having another affair. I wanted to be wrong. I wanted to find that he was faithful.

When these receipts turned up over a year after he left, my first instinct was to unroll them and read the lettering. I realized though that even if they did have further proof that he was seeing someone else, I didn't want to know. We will be divorced in another month. What good would it do to know the details of what he was doing all the nights he didn't come home? I knew that whatever was written on the receipts would only make me feel worse, would only bring up the same heart-pounding, nauseating, sweat-soaked chills that I felt all too often during the five years of our marriage. I picked them up from the floor, ripped them to pieces, and tossed them into the trash.

63: Plastic Bags

If you've been reading this blog you've probably already noticed that many of the things I'd previously clung to were bordering on ridiculous.  If the other items came close to pushing the lunacy scale, these max it out: plastic bags. Plastic bags that were used to carry items from store to home. As if saving the items wasn't enough, I saved the bags they came in.

I discovered Peet's coffee when I first started taking dance lessons in Harvard Square during the summer before my junior year of high school. I was enrolled in an intensive program that ran Monday through Friday from 9 AM until 4 PM. We had a lunch break mid-day when we could explore local cafes and stores in the square. After drinking Dunkin Donuts' Coffee Coolattas for months, I was pleasantly surprised that the Peet's version of the slushy drink actually had coffee in it-- not just coffee flavored syrup or bottom of the carafe coffee, but fresh shots of espresso. It was love at first sip.

I got an espresso machine for Christmas the year I discovered Peet's coffee and began buying espresso by the pound from the store in Harvard Square. They kept bins of beans that they'd grind while you waited, offering you a free coffee with a one pound purchase. I would leave the store, paper bag in hand, and suck Freddos through a straw even in the winter time. I'd finish the drink before I made it to the end of the platform at the train station and feel the kick from the espresso shots immediately. If I'd already had my four shots of espresso and lunch time coffee, the Freddo would be enough to set my hands shaking for the rest of the day. Even though I've cut my coffee consumption down to a single mug every morning, I still brew the darkest roast of Peet's coffee and savor every sip. Several years ago Peet's started selling pounds of coffee in most supermarkets, so I don't have to make a trip to Cambridge just to buy a pound, and even if I did, I wouldn't need to take one of these old paper bags with me.

Years before I tried Peet's coffee for the first time, I tried on my first pair of pointe shoes. The whole ballet class met together at the store for the fitting. The employees working gave most of us the same brand and model shoe. They cost as much as a pair of sneakers, but barely lasted a few months before the box wore down and the soles flapped across the creases formed from bending the arch of the foot to the tips of the toes. With the new shoes, I bought lamb's wool to wrap around my toes and a new pair of tights, also overpriced. They fit neatly into the purple plastic bag pictured above.

I can't remember the first time I shopped in Celtic Weavers, but I'm sure it was after I started dating my Irish ex-husband. I frequented Boston's Faneuil Hall in the summer. Merchants set up rows of carts along the cobblestone streets and businesses bustled indoors. On the first floor of the centrally located building, one can buy just about every type of food. I never bought anything to eat, but I loved walking from one end to the other, squeezing between the crowds of people, and inhaling the different scents.

I always wanted to go into Celtic Weaves, but was afraid someone would notice I was Italian and look at me like I didn't belong. It was a ridiculous thought to think that someone shopping in one of the most heavily trafficked tourist spots of Boston would be turned away or looked at funny for her heritage. My fear was especially unfounded since despite the fact that I come from a family that is exclusively Italian I look Russian or something else from a northern, cold climate. When I started dating my ex I went in figuring I'd just say I was shopping for someone else if I was questioned. I bought him a wool scally cap with a patch inside proclaiming it was pure Donegal wool.  He lost his hat one night after drinking too much, but I held onto the plastic bag it had come in for close to a decade. Logic must have escaped me long ago.

When we'd been dating for a few years, my boyfriend started joking about how he was going to propose to me in a shocking and memorable way. No kneeling on one knee and reaching into his back pocket to pull out a tiny box. He wanted something surprising since we talked openly about getting married from when we'd only been together for two months. We thought for sure we were soul mates, meant to be together forever. Maybe we were soul mates, meant to teach each other lessons we couldn't have learned on our own, but we were not meant to be together forever.

For a while, he kept saying he was going to propose to me by bursting into the bathroom while I was sitting on the toilet. I made it clear that I would be horrified and decline his proposal if he ever did something so embarrassing.

He proposed to me on New Year's Eve, just days before he would return to Germany and less than two months before deploying to Iraq. We'd been going to his best friend's house to celebrate the new year for years and it was only natural that we'd be there again the year he proposed to me. We hadn't been there long before he said he was going to go to the kitchen to fix a drink-- my first clue that something was different since fixing a drink usually meant pulling a beer from the fridge and biting the cap off with his teeth. A few minutes later he yelled from the kitchen for us to come quick because he'd cut himself-- second indication that things weren't right since if he did cut himself he'd just wrap his dirty flannel over the wound and let the blood seep through the fabric the rest of the night. His friends and I walked to the other room to see him. He was holding a giant wad of paper towels in his hand and blood was puddling all over the floor. His friends stood in the doorway watching as he held his hand and walked in circles, one of them had a camera ready even though they never took pictures. I knew he was about to propose and tried to mentally prepare myself to act surprised. I admonished his friends for standing around and doing nothing, walked into the kitchen, took his hand in mine, and lifted the bloody paper towels. Beneath the wad of cloth was the ring box, still in the white cardboard, smeared in the fake blood he'd bought from a local iparty. I couldn't get the second box out and ripped the side after several awkward seconds that felt like minutes of struggling. When I lifted the top and looked inside at the ring I was genuinely surprised, not that it was a ring, but that he hadn't bought me something covered in emeralds and Celtics knots (I never liked my deep green birthstone and I wouldn't have felt right wearing Celtic knots.) He asked if I'd marry him, I said of course, we kissed, and his friends applauded from the doorway. The ring was too big and rolled around my finger, but I didn't care, I was engaged.

When I showed my mother the ring the next morning she said, "I hope it's a very long engagement." I don't think we had any idea then when we'd get married, Iraq was all that was on our minds. As the thirteen months of his deployment passed though, we started planning the wedding for when he returned. I'd be graduating from college the next spring and wouldn't be able to live with him on base unless we got married, so it only made sense to rush things along.

Since he was away and wouldn't be back until a week before the wedding, I bought both of our bands from the same jeweler where he went for my engagement ring. My ring didn't come as a set and the band had to be made to match the high mound of white gold that surrounded the diamonds. The square holes that they'd filled in still showed on the inside and filled up with dirt and soap after months of wear. The woman who sold it to me said I could still fill it in with diamonds if I wanted to later. She said happily that maybe my husband would buy me one for each of our wedding anniversaries. I didn't want more diamonds, or even a wedding band for that matter. My husband had bought me a solid band with the Gaelic words for soul mate engraved around the outside for my nineteenth birthday. I wore it on the finger with my engagement ring and thought it would work just fine as a wedding band. He insisted that I buy another band though, and encouraged me to get diamonds. After spending four years in retail watching wealthy women flaunt their giant rings on thin fingers when buying books they probably never read, I didn't want diamonds or anything flashy.  I bought us both simple, solid gold rings and, of course, kept the bag they came in.

Although I'm not yet ready to get rid of my wedding rings, it was easy to crumple up the plastic bag and shove it into the recycling bin. I often wonder what divorced women do with their old rings. Do they wear them on their right hand instead as a statement of independence or has that fad faded? Selling it at a pawn shop or jewelry store just doesn't feel right. Does that mean someone else will buy it for his future wife? Will he know that it was once worn by someone whose marriage failed or do the jewelers clean the rings and sell them as new? Can you buy refurbished rings like you would a TV or laptop?  "With this refurbished ring I thee wed..." is about as out of place as the Elizabethan language in modern vows. Maybe they extract the diamonds and melt the gold to form a fresh band, to begin again from something that never seemed to fit in the first place.

62: Flower Paper

My boyfriend happened to be granted his two weeks of leave from Iraq around my twenty-first birthday. The morning of my birthday he made up a lie about having to do something for his grandmother so that he could find time to get me a gift. I remember we were sitting on the couch in his sister's apartment when he said he was going to have to spend the morning with his family and I wasn't invited to join. I made it clear enough that I was upset and he eventually confessed to the lie. Stretching the truth came naturally to him.

Once, when we first started dating, I lied to him. I had rehearsal for a dance performance one night in Central Square and he insisted on taking the T with me even though he had to be at work. He reasoned that he needed to protect me even though I'd been riding the train alone since I was thirteen and had done just fine surviving. Growing up I learned to value independence and would have to be near death to ask for help let alone an escort. I'd gotten myself out of what might have been traumatic experiences on several occasions and was confident, maybe even cocky, that I would be able to do it again. Still, it was the first time in my life I'd had someone dote over me the way he did and I didn't fight too hard when he said he'd take me to the turn style of Harvard Square. I'd taken the train an extra stop because we were early and I wanted to stop at Peet's to buy a Cafe Freddo. Central Square is just a ten minute walk from Harvard. I figured I'd enjoy my coffee on the way and get to rehearsal on time. We were at the turn style (it was in the days before the T converted to their new system and there were still revolving, round, metal poles that were easy to pull back and walk through without paying) when he asked me where the rehearsal was. I lied and said it was in Harvard Square because I knew that if he walked with me to Central he'd be late to work. He must have caught the inflection in my voice, the shift of my eyes, the nervousness that comes from the unpracticed lie. In an instant he was raging about how he knew I was lying and threatening me, "Don't you ever lie to me again.  That was the first and last time I lied to him.  I wish he had lived by his own tenets.

After he told me the real reason he didn't want to be with me on the morning of my twenty-first birthday, I said that I didn't mind him going to the mall to find something, although I didn't need a present because I was grateful enough to have him with me on my birthday. I went home to spend time with my brother and father, who were also celebrating their birthdays, while he went to the local mall. He wasn't away for long and came back with a dozen red roses wrapped in the pink patterned paper pictured above. It was the first time he ever bought me flowers and even though I'd been preaching about how I didn't want flowers for four years since our first Valentine's Day "together," the sight of the roses brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my lips. It doesn't take much to charm someone who's not used to attention.

In addition to the flowers, he bought me two books that I already owned and I felt terrible about telling him I had them on my bookshelves.  My mother started a fight with me that night about drinking and driving. She equated my boyfriend with irresponsibility, aptly so, but back then I didn't realize it behind the blinders of love. I wanted to point out the fact that for the past two years I'd been leaving my car at home in the driveway to go drinking and stumbling my way home, but thought it would only make things worse. After nightmare rides in the car with my father as a child you'd think she'd trust that I knew enough not to drink and drive.

I didn't drink at all on my twenty-first birthday. I drove my boyfriend to the park that we would get married in the following March. We sat on the stone overhang and watched the sunset. I clung to memories while he was away at war and the memory of the sunset was one that I'd relive over and over. The fact that I might never see him again had something to do with my collecting needless objects like the paper wrapped around the flowers (I kept every petal of every rose too). Each object was a memory, an emotion I wanted to hold onto to fill the void he left each time he got on a plane. Now, looking back on things with vision as clouded by the present as it was then by love, I want to eliminate every object that brings back memories I once tried so hard not to forget.

61: Safety Pin and Fabric

My ex has been wearing flannels since they were popular in the early nineties when grunge music was at its height. In high school he had two that he alternated between-- one was red and black plaid stripes, the other was black/gray with a thin white line forming boxes on the fabric. He wore one or the other every day and refused to wash them. They soaked up sweat (they were a wardrobe essential even in the summer time), spilled beer, art debris on the tables in sculpture class, the scent of roll-your-own Bali-Shag cigarettes, and Old Spice deodorant. When he deployed to Iraq he left his flannels with me. I would wrap them around me on lonely nights and inhale the scent that didn't dissipate in the thirteen months that he was away. 

His senior year in high school he ripped the arm of his lucky flannel (the red and black one) fighting, playing football, or while drinking (I can't remember which.) The thin, frayed fabric hung down, exposing his pale forearm. In the winter, before I had a car, we would spend time together sitting pressed into the corner of the stone overhang of the abandoned church near my house. One night when the temperatures were well below freezing, he took off his flannel and wrapped it around me. It was just before Christmas and he'd been certain to say I wasn't allowed to buy him any gifts. I decided I would sew shut the holes in his flannel as a surprise. The breast pocket had ripped long ago from shoving his packages of Bali-Shag too hard into the worn fabric and the thin pieces were hanging on by a series of safety pins.

A few days before Christmas I pinned together the sleeve, but realized that so much fabric was missing that it would be noticeably damaged if I just sewed it shut. I woke up early on Christmas Eve to go to the Garment District, a second-hand clothing store in Cambridge, to find a flannel just like the one he'd ripped. I hated the fact that I had to work in retail on Christmas Eve and I hated the fact that I was joining the ranks of people who wait until the day before the major holiday to do their shopping. I found a red and black checkered flannel, brought it to the register, and ran toward the train station.

That night I set to work repairing the old flannel by transplanting small pieces of the new one into the fabric of the original. I sewed the pocket shut before moving to the forearm. A piece of fabric ripped off when I was pulling the safety pins off the pocket. I kept it as a relic of his favorite flannel, figuring someday soon it would probably disintegrate and the pin piece would be the only remnant.

Much like Valentine's Day, I waited by the phone on Christmas, expecting a call from him that would never come. My family, who were shocked that I had had a boyfriend for six months, asked where he was. I said he was sleeping (all that came to mind and a terrible excuse). They told me to call and wake him up, but I refused, figuring I'd hear from him that night. He didn't call that night, or the next day, or for the entire week of school vacation. Looking back, I wonder why I didn't walk away then and save myself nine years of his disappearing for days, weeks at a time.  He called me just before we were set to return to school to say he'd broken all the gifts he'd hand-made on his way home from school and had been too ashamed to admit it. He described in detail the sculpture he'd made for me of a heart with a sword through it and said how he'd dropped it, then deliberately shattered it more when it had cracked. I believed him, but after years of broken trust I wonder now if he wasn't lying to me even then. I told him on the phone that I'd sewn his flannel. He was angry at first, but when I gave it to him in person he was grateful. 

I can't remember the last time I saw him wearing the infamous flannel. I wonder if he finally retired it now that he's an adult, but think that he probably has it strewn among all of his other clothes across the floor in his room. When I was cleaning through my things I found the safety pin with the fabric still attached. Maybe it was the last remaining piece of his favorite flannel. I can't remember now whether I just threw it away or if I put it with the small bag of things I thought he might want back. Either way, I'm glad I won't come across this painful reminder of the past the next time I go looking for a safety pin.

60: Mini-Piano

Since childhood I've always wanted to learn to play the piano. Some of my earliest memories include the small, white, wooden, toy piano that I would bang on for hours, composing original songs. It was about a foot wide and long, included tiny two-inch legs, and maybe twenty keys. It was one of the few toys that survived years of my mothers' yearly toy-room cleanings.  I don't remember when it finally found its way into the trash or bag of donations, but I do remember I never lost my lust for the piano.

Over the years after the wooden piano, I bought several of the hand-held electronic keyboards from the toy aisle in Osco Drug. They came with a small song book and instructions for playing tunes like "Mary Had a Little Lamb." I'd play the songs over and over until I could perform them without reading the notes. Then I'd press the tiny keys faster and faster trying to beat my previous time.  I found I'd kept one of the electronic pianos when I was cleaning through bins from my parents' house. I opened the yellow case and pressed on each key, but, having experienced irreversible hearing loss several years ago, I could no longer hear some of the notes. I placed it in the pile of things to give away.

My high school offered a piano lab class that I tried to sign up for, but the class was either cancelled due to low enrollment or didn't fit my schedule. In college I bought a full length keyboard from a friend of a friend. My brother drove over with me and helped me carry it down from his third floor apartment and load it into the back of his pick up truck. We put it together in my parents' attic. I bought a Piano for Dummies book and spent weeks trying to teach myself to play. I learned a simple song that I practiced until I'd memorized all the notes. It was during one of the rare weeks off between college semesters that I learned to play and as soon as classes started again, I couldn't find the time to practice. The keyboard collected a thick layer of dust and became home to several spiders, further deterring me from playing. When I moved to Georgia after college I left it behind in my parents' attic.

After my ex had finally cleared the last of his things from my apartment, I had plenty of free space and decided to bring things from my parents house. My brother helped me carry eight boxes and the piano into my apartment. The piano fit perfectly along a wall in my living room. I signed up for piano classes that will begin the day I go to court to finalize my divorce. Despite how devastating it has been to let go of a relationship that lasted nine years, I am forever grateful that it did dissolve because being single has allowed me the opportunity to do so many things I wouldn't have done otherwise.  Learning to play the piano is just another old desire long put-off for the purpose of trying to patch together a broken relationship. In the past, I was hesitant to fill up my free time because I reasoned that if I could be home whenever my husband was available, which wasn't often, I could somehow salvage what was left of our relationship. Now that our relationship is long past surviving, I'm revisiting old passions and desires long suppressed. For the first time in my life I have been living for me, putting myself first, making decisions based on my needs and values. Losing my husband meant losing a part of my identity, losing what I'd determined would be my future together with him. Although at times, especially initially, no longer having a clear idea of where I was going or what I was doing with my future made me feel lost and anxious, I am learning to be comfortable with and grateful for the uncertainty. What a beautiful and devastating thing it is to be free of the planned path of life and instead to have to find your foothold along an unmarked trail. 

59: Place Cards

When planning our wedding, my fiance and I were most concerned about preventing a fight between the guests. We wanted to just go to city hall, sign the papers, and call it official to avoid an inevitable fight. We settled on having the smallest wedding possible. With only our immediate family and two of my husband's best friends we had eleven guests at the wedding. The room where we held the reception was tiny with three round tables, room for a set of longer tables where the food was set out, and a small empty space not large enough to dance near the entrance. Despite the small number of guests, I created a seating plan to prevent discord.

I bought place cards at Target and Celtic knot stamps from Barnes and Noble. It took a while to find a font I liked and to adjust the placement of the words on the place cards. I ran test pages on regular computer paper and held the sheets up to a light against the cards. Each card received two knot stamps on either side of the name, table, and seat number. I added the date of our wedding on the back.

I went to the reception hall the morning of the wedding to set up. I'd made center pieces of glass vases with purple irises and white roses to match my bouquet.  The larger table, for my husband's family, was closest to the windows, we sat in the center of the room with the two best men, and my family's table was behind ours in a corner. Trying to determine an order that would create accord at my husband's family table was like solving a Calculus problem. I reviewed it with him over the phone while he was reintegrating in Germany to make sure I hadn't overlooked any potential problems.

My husband and I entered the reception room first after the wedding. The photographer made us pose in front of the curtained entrance. It is one of these shots that is still hanging on the wall in my parents' living room. Everyone stood by the door, hesitant to sit down. They came in and silently found their place cards after encouragement from my husband. Everyone got up after putting down their jackets to go downstairs to get a drink.

The reception was tense, silent, awkward. A fight did happen, but not at the tables. We left the reception room two hours before our allotted time was finished. I helped box up the food and center pieces while we waited for the town car to pick us up and bring us to the hotel we spent the night in. Since our guest list was so small, I had dozens of left over place cards. I saved them thinking I'd use them for our five-year anniversary second wedding or celebration. Instead, the found their way into the bottom of a box of donated goods six years after the wedding.

58: Cards

When we first started dating, my boyfriend was adamant that I couldn't buy anything for him. I decided to be creative with Valentine's Day approaching. Sometimes on Saturday nights the guys I worked with would drink as they cleaned up.  I saved two Guinness cans (my boyfriend's favorite beer) from one of those nights and sculpted his favorite flower, a black rose, out of the cans. I cut the sides into black ovals and glued them into a bottle cap. The yellow center came from the can top-- the piece the depresses when you open the mouth. I found a green can, ginger ale perhaps, to cut thin leaves. We were both off from work on Valentine's Day and I waited by my phone for him to call. As the hours ticked away I invented excuses for why he hadn't called. When I talked to him days later he said it was a stupid holiday. I agreed but would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. I never gave him the black rose.

After that I never expected anything on Valentine's Day. In truth, I didn't want over-priced roses or chocolates that I couldn't eat anyway, and I outgrew stuffed animals about twenty years ago. When people asked about why we didn't "celebrate" I told them that we loved each other every day of the year and didn't need one day to show it by buying each other objects.

The first Valentine's Day that we lived together he came home from work with a card for me.  The card was designed for a teacher, but he'd handwritten in his own criteria under "teacher's report card." I cried when I opened and read it. I cried because it was unexpected, simple, sweet. I cried because I hadn't planned anything since we hadn't acknowledged the past four Valentine's Days.  I felt inadequate. I learned later that his Staff Sergeant who was close to retirement and had been married just as long as he'd been enlisted, had driven him home from work, stopped at a store to buy something for his wife, and ordered my husband to get something for me. I could picture him filling out the card on his knee in the car as he'd done so many times for others in my passenger seat.

From the time I learned to read I always took cards seriously. My extended family would become exasperated as I sounded out every syllable of every word, working my way through the card before meticulously sliding paper off presents. Buying cards was and still is an equally involved process in which I read just about every card on the display and decide none of them are right. I often waste hours in the store trying to find one that seems right, usually beginning the process weeks in advance so I don't feel pressured to purchase something that doesn't work well. 

I started saving cards when I was seven and hospitalized. I had a giant bag of sentiments that I took out and re-read, sorted, and categorized by colors and designs. After encouragement from my mother during one of our yearly cleanses of the toy room I threw them all away, an action I would regret for years after. I do still collect cards, although I'm less careful about keeping every one. 

When I was conducting a massive purging of my apartment earlier this summer I combed through my card piles from things that were stored at my parents house and in my home now. I decided to discard every holiday card addressed to both my husband and I-- all the cutesy couple cards about how we make a great pair sent at Christmas and on our anniversary.  I also uncovered every card my husband ever gave to me, including the one from Valentine's Day six years ago. They were mostly birthday and anniversary cards with some for Saint Patrick's Day. Of all the things I've gotten rid of these past few months, the cards were the most emotional. It wasn't enough to just pile them into the recycling bin. I opened each card and re-read all of his hand-written notes before ripping them individually into shreds. In doing so, I felt as if I was ripping away layers of the past I didn't know I was still carrying around with me. I gave myself permission to cry and to mourn the loss of a relationship I thought would grow old with me. After I'd torn up the last card I shoved the shards into a manila envelope and deep into the recycling bin beneath the piles of other papers I'd already sorted through. It's amazing how much weight these cards were holding against my heart and how freeing it was to let them go forever.

57: Bottle Caps

I tried beer for the first time when I was seven. I was siting on my father's left knee and my brother was on his right. My brother was eleven and asked for a taste of the ever-present Coors Light can in my father's calloused hand.  At that age, I insisted on doing everything my brother did, so I was second to take a small sip from the silver can. The next day in school I wrote a journal entry about how disgusting it was and included a hand-drawn picture of me with yellow hair and round blue eyes spitting out black lines of beer. I wonder why the teacher didn't find it concerning that I had tasted beer in first grade.

I had the opportunity to drink several times in high school, but chose not to. I thought that I would never drink if it meant acting like my father.

I started dating my ex-husband when I was eighteen. He was a year younger than me and drank every weekend. We would see each other on weekdays, then he'd disappear from Friday to Sunday. He'd recount the stories of his days of drinking detailing all the practical jokes and tomfoolery.  It wasn't long before I decided I wanted to join the fun and drink with him.

I don't remember what I drank the first time or how much. I remember walking home and stopping with my boyfriend at the abandoned church near my house-- we spent most of the first year of our relationship sitting on the stone steps in front of the empty building. He thought I was drunk, but I was adamant that I wasn't. I didn't know what drunk was supposed to feel like, but I knew what it looked like from years of seeing my father stumble around the house at night. I do clearly recall the second time I drank with my ex, even though I got drunk enough to pass out. I must have inherited my father's high tolerance because I had four beers and two Irish car bombs before puking and falling asleep in the corner. I slept it off for an hour, then woke up and started trying to kick my boyfriend awake so he would walk me home.

I hated the taste of every beer I drank that night and even though I'd enjoyed the car bombs I became lactose intolerant a few months later. I spent months after trying dozens of different beers, but they all reminded me of the single sip from when I was seven. In the summer before my boyfriend left for basic training I tried Jagermeister. It tasted syrupy and strong and warmed my throat and heart on the way down. Unlike beer, I felt the effects after just a couple shots. When I was old enough to buy alcohol myself, I kept a bottle beside my bed and would drink it to numb my senses and lull me off to sleep each night.

When we lived together in Georgia I got the idea to start saving bottle caps to create an ashtray for my husband. It didn't take long for the caps to collect and I crafted a giant container out of an empty pineapple juice can. I continued to collect caps, figuring I'd make something else someday. My ex quit smoking a year after we moved in together and he threw away the ashtray. I remember I was disappointed and hurt that he'd so easily disposed of it, back then I was very much attached to objects and their projected meaning.

I still had a plastic bag filled with sticky caps inside one of my old purses in a box brought up from Georgia. Just the scent from opening the bag was enough to bring back the memories of our many nights of drinking together. The caps lasted long enough for a picture before I tossed them into the trash. I am grateful to have eliminated another useless relic from the dark corner of my closet.

56: Pamphlets

When I was seven the disease that I was born with nearly killed me. I kept the pain in my back a secret for as long as I could. It started like a pulled muscle, warm and tender. Then it spread further up my back until I felt like I couldn't stand up. When I finally admitted I was in pain my parents rushed me to the hospital. In the waiting room I tried to refuse the wheelchair that the nurses brought over for me, but was too weak to physically protest when my father effortlessly lifted me up and placed me in the leather seat.

I spent two weeks in the hospital, wheeled around from one test to another--MRI's and CAT scans where I had to lie still or breathe on command, drink giant glasses of disgusting dye, avoid touching the IV needle in my tiny arm. When I was finally released from constant care and allowed to go home, I had to see my doctor daily for months. I wasn't allowed to go back to school, so a teacher came to my house to tutor me. She held up cards with words for me to identify. I could never remember the word hospital and the the teacher would always prompt me: "You were in one." When I was allowed to go back to school I told my friends that the doctors didn't know what was wrong with me. As soon as I was old enough to understand that I was different I was given clear instructions never to speak of my disease to anyone.

The fact that only my immediate family knew made it easy to pretend I was healthy until an upcoming doctor's visit reminded me of my plight. When I was younger I visited the nephrologist every six months. Once a year I would have to lie still while the doctor smeared jelly over my torso for the ultrasound. Before I was hospitalized I would kick and scream and fight, anything to escape the cold room. After enduring daily tests and needles, going twice a year was insignificant. I stared silently up at the ceiling and counted the tiny dots in the tiles during the ultrasound and sat stoically as the nurses drew my blood.  Starting when I was a teenager and still today I make a yearly visit to the doctor to discuss the results of my most recent blood test.

For years I've allowed myself one week a year to feel self-pity as I anticipate my upcoming appointment knowing that I will hear that my kidneys are steadily losing function and causing other systems in my body to degenerate. The doctor's office always has pamphlets hanging on the wall and every year I take one of each, shoving them into my purse before the doctor comes into the room. On the train ride home from the hospital I read about kidney failure, dialysis, transplantation. I send myself into a fit of anxiety thinking about what life would be like having to sit several times a week in a room while my blood is pumped and filtered by a machine. Each year after the anxiety and self-pity have worn away and I've lost the pamphlets somewhere in my house, I cling to something that I think will cure me--raw food, Reiki, Ayurveda, and yoga are just a few of my most recent attachments-- and each year I am deflated again by a new set of blood tests, another visit to the doctor.

I found a stack of pamphlets when I was cleaning my apartment recently. I put them in the recycling bin without opening them to the pictures that I could recreate freehand having seen them so often. Today, as I was walking away from the hospital with fresh gauze taped to my inner arm I felt the sun on my skin, looked up at the blue sky and noticed for the first time in a while how beautiful it was to be alive. Today, I let go of more than just pieces of paper, I let go of obsessively worrying over what will happen someday in the future and focus instead on where I am in the present. With my eyes on the pages of a pamphlet and my mind on the future, I would miss all that is happening here, now.  I would miss out on the life I have left to live. 

55: Folgers Coffee Ad

I was in high school English class when the World Trade Center was hit purposefully by planes. I was sitting in the last seat, first row when another teacher poked her head into the room and motioned to Mrs. Guerreiro to step outside. She returned with a look on her face I had never seen before. She stepped slowly behind her wooden podium, said, "Don't worry. You have no reason to be afraid unless I am," and went back to teaching the lesson. Word spreads fast in high schools and by lunch everyone was talking about how the twin towers had been bombed.

I had French class after lunch. The history teacher next door had borrowed a TV from the library and was showing the local news to his class. Our teacher opened the door between the rooms and we all crowded in to watch the same clip of the planes hitting the towers again and again. I thought it was computer generated. I didn't believe it was real. The entire school was dismissed early. We were rushed through the halls and told not to stop at our lockers.

Outside it was beautiful, uncommonly warm for mid-September in New England. I always stopped at the Dunkin Donuts beside the high school and ordered a medium iced coffee with skim milk and two sugars to drink on my walk home.  As I approached the store that day I noticed the blinds were drawn. When I tried the door it was locked. The twenty-four hour Dunkin Donuts that was open on every major holiday had closed.

When less than a month later I watched the green, grainy footage of the US bombing Afghanistan nothing made sense to me. We didn't learn anything in school about the Middle East beyond Mesopotamia. I remember walking by the war memorial park that I would get married in six years later and seeing yellow ribbons tied around the trees. Somehow I knew this war would drag on for years. I started taking photographs with intentions of creating an album so that I'd someday recall what it was like in the beginning. I had no idea then how the war would impact me personally in the future.

Although we didn't learn about modern history or the Middle East in school, we spent months on both world wars. I wondered if the so called War on Terror would ever be so widespread. I wondered if we would fall into another Great Depression or if we'd have to ration food and goods. To prepare, I started stockpiling coffee.

In the summer time my mother would always make herself glasses of instant iced coffee.  She'd scoop the brown Folgers crystals into her glass with a teaspoon, add sugar, and swirl them together as she held the glass under the kitchen sink. She'd add in milk, take a single sip, sigh audibly, then leave the glass on the yellow counter-top to go outside and smoke a cigarette. The bubbles that had formed from the stirring at the sink always looked delicious and I would sip them secretly before my mother returned to the kitchen.  So began my addiction to coffee.

By my junior year in high school I would start each day with four shots of espresso, black with sugar. I had my second coffee on my way home from school, and sometimes drank a third at night after dinner. Looking back now, it's no wonder I could never sleep at night.

Back when newspapers only cost a quarter or two a day, my father used to buy The Boston Globe. On Sundays it came filled with advertisements for local stores. The Folgers ad was in one of the coupon books. The top had a round scratch and sniff circle that smelled like coffee. I kept it in my Calculus book senior year and would take it out to inhale the scent mid-morning every day.

Even though the war in Afghanistan is still going on twelve years later, we haven't had to deal with rationing and for most Americans the war may as well be over. Newspaper articles slowly made their way from the front page further into the paper until they became almost non-existent. My high school students who were just infants on September 11, 2001 don't even know we are at war. In college, when my coffee addiction reached an all time high, I drank the pounds of coffee that I'd been storing in my bedroom. The Folgers coffee ad resurfaced weeks ago when I was going through bins that I'd been storing at my parents' house. I no longer need the scent of coffee to get me through the day and no longer need pointless pieces of paper to remind me of the past.