Recently, I joined the Indiana Writers Center’s creative nonfiction group. The leader provides a prompt, and we all respond. The March prompt was to read this list essay featured in The Best of Brevity and write our own version. Here’s mine, which I’m sharing because it’s sort of about Stola (and maybe, also, about aging).
The Things I Lost:
A fear of spiders: as long as the room is well-lit and there is a cup nearby to place on top of the spider and a postcard or junk mail to slide underneath the cup so I can carry it outside to release it far, far away from me.
My blankie: mine from the day I was born, tucked on a shelf in my closet since college, and then my daughter turned five and became scared of the dark and asked for it to comfort her.
The memory of why I came into this room.
One sofa, two seatbelts, seven pairs of glasses, a fiber optic internet line, all my nice pens, three library books, and a talking, singing, dancing, light-up stuffed bear: I’m not too mad about that last one, but this puppy is a nightmare.
The recipe for the ranch-flavored baked pretzels I used to make every weekend: somehow the ingredients of that snack have disappeared from my memory, but the lyrics to every song I listened to on the radio in the 90s are still intact.
A dozen pairs of heels: along with any desire to wear them. The shoe closet from twenty years ago has morphed into a shoe bucket, stuffed with one pair of sneakers, rubber rain boots, hiking boots, and two pairs of sandals–both bearing the puppy’s teethmarks.
One zebra print rug purchased from the Urban Outfitters in Georgetown: misplaced in a move from DC to Indiana, or maybe it was Indiana to Louisiana. It wouldn’t really go with our house anymore anyway.
My attention span: forfeit to endless tasks, demands, distractions, scrolling.
The name of the girl from my sophomore poetry course who borrowed my copy of Firekeeper and left little notes throughout: I’m rereading this collection now, all these years later, and her sharp, funny margin notes make me wish that was a friendship I hung onto.
The perfect black raincoat: left on a subway during the early spring when the cherry blossoms bloom and leave a faint vanilla scent hanging in the air until the hard rain falls and scatters the pale pink flowers along the sidewalk. I carried that perfect raincoat onto the train, settled in with my book, and–arriving at my stop mid-page–walked off the train with my nose in the book and the raincoat left behind on the seat.
Forbearance: for a lousy government, for inattentive teachers, for people who are rude to the waitstaff, for anyone who cuts in line or drops litter in public. My patience in midlife is reserved for puppies, children, and my husband.
There’s no room left for more.
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