BURNT MEMORIES SERIES

With a single mom working on a PhD, my sister and I would get shipped off to various family members in the summers for my mom to focus on her dissertation. I can still remember the wallpaper leftovers and carpet squares, patch-working my great grandmother’s upstairs bedroom together. The retro flowers in rows, flipping from avocado green to mustard yellow and rusty orange were in odd contrast with the elaborate gilded filigree wallpaper on the adjacent wall. Each nook had a different era etched onto it, with these patterns as the backdrop for vintage dressers, knick knacks, and crooked photos. The flytraps hanging from the window sills flickering like sun catchers. I could easily spend hours combing the room for a picture I hadn’t seen before, a seashell lamp that was now burnt out, a dusty picture of my grandma and her 8 siblings. I used to remember all these things so clearly, this museum of familial memories that were not my own, but were held tightly through my lineage of blood and marriage, divorce, and stories retold at each Sunday lunch at great grandma’s. These memories became an inheritance. I could feel the weight of them even as a child, desperate to be held and passed on, though fleeting as age and distance became a controlled burn for my heart, clearing the path to make room for new ones. Occasionally I can dig my way back and recall some parts, but I can’t seem to turn my head to the right to see what’s on that end table, trapped in the unfinished room.