papier-mâché personality
There are three of me, I’m told, but I can’t remember who they are.
Me then. Me now. My reflection.
I made a friend once, out of papier-mâché. I cannot spell that hyphenated word; I copy and paste.
My favorite part of telling people was always the pause between, “I made a new friend” and … “out of papier-mâché.”
My ex-husband, a seedless salt man, gave me the side eye and a raised eyebrow. He encouraged me to leave my buddy behind when we left life in Baltimore for a military base in South Carolina. After dating six months, he reenlisted in the Army and I thought, it was “either get married and move to Germany for a few years or break up.”
I was really excited about foreign travel.
When we packed a small U-haul truck with the essentials. I kept my black top hat but left my friend’s newspaper skin and cardboard bones broken and exposed, head down, legs sticking out of the trash.
I’m not saying I wish we had cellphones with cameras 25 years ago, but that would have been an amazing photograph to support my memory. I walked into the sunset squinting my eyes and hoping to hear a horrified shriek from someone who thought I left a child in a dumpster.
Maybe just my inner child.
That papier-mâché friend wasn’t all I lost when the millennium turned; I let go of the black and white end table I painted with a 64-square chess board on top. I gave it to my brother for his 21st birthday.
He doesn’t remember.
I sat on a tiny condo balcony with newspaper sprawled under an unpainted wooden rocking chair like the ones for sale outside Cracker Barrel restaurants.
I painted a rocking chair for Chris, and arranged butterfly stickers over bright blue, yellow and red slats along the chair’s back. I remember my creativity with pride. Like everything I could ever capture to hold the energy of a memory, I keep a photo somewhere in a locked box.
Back then, I built relationships using art supplies.