yaya

There is a box upstairs at the bottom of my bed. M tells me its filed with old notes, and photographs from her childhood. She left it there because she knows I have an excruciating fixation for old dialogue; lost mementos. She knows I wish I could touch the 60's like she did, feel the breeze of the next decade wrap its locks around my shoulders, tube topped bikinis and a pool filled with blue so fresh in hindsight its waddings seemed new despite being filled over a month before. I flip through square, matted photographs the size of my palm. Fresh faces of family friends attached to little tan bodies, forming themselves into cannonballs, mouths on brown bottles, wooden lawn chairs sprawled next to a spread of chips and cheese, and M. She's thrown over the shoulder of a handsome, longhaired being. His smile speaks to me as he smirks at the lens holding her over his shoulder; her left hand twisted behind her to keep the bottom of her white bathing suit up. I can hear this image. The tiles of the patio looked the same then as they did as far back as I can remember. I feel the grains of sand on my shoeless foot and smell the anthills around the dandelions. I can look beyond the pool, see the clothesline collapsed in the far corner of the yard. I've never been over there. I'm amazed at how large the yard is, and how little of it my hands have touched. There was never any need.
I find a stack of letters and open the first one. Y is speaking of the kitchen renovation and the colour of the new carpeting. Shag Green. They're building a sauna, too. Like the Yard, I've never seen inside the sauna. I could tell you the number of creases in the wood, the number of nails in the pane, but I have no idea what its like to step inside, look out from in. I can see inside the kitchen window stained with years, look onto the stove and remember that it is newer than the walls that surround it. I can see the stacks of papers piled onto the table next to the bricked divider. I can remember when I discovered it was olive green. Beyond the olive table is the Room, the bane of our imaginations, filled with treasures only a childish mind could relish. It'd been nearly ten years since we were at the house, but when we finally did go, we congregated in the Room. Sure enough, A found a typewriter beside an old photograph of Y which he was promptly encouraged to keep. Beyond the Room, there is another Room. Padlocked and dusted (perhaps more so than the rest of the house), I'm fairly convinced that door hadn't been opened since I attempted as a child. I can recall opening its hinges many years before, hearing its creak, and its cobwebs so mature they draped like stuff only made to look like them. In its blackness hung a lamp, to the corner of the wooden stairs void of footsteps for over a decade. This time, we decsended. More cobwebs. Mason Jars filled with tobacco liquid. A bicycle nearly consumed with rust, knitting needles. Canned food. Photographs. Frames. Camera equipment.
I read dozens of letters, most are addressed to her, and I'm shocked at her age in them. She's younger than me. The rest of them are addressed to A, and It dawns on me how little I could have known her. It makes me wish I believed in an After, makes me remember sheepishly considering her a life without her (Just to see how i'd imagine it), and I couldn't. At the time, I even laughed, it was so preposterous! I prided my young self on my ability to represent feelings I'd never before felt, imagine scenarios I'd expect to react - but this, I couldn't. I remember the moment I did. She'd just been with me in the living room, talking to me. I can't recall our conversation, only her back leaving me. Walking from the sunken pink carpet, onto the squared hardwood, to the detailed linoleum floor of the kitchen, I tried (and failed) to imagine it, but I could only get as far as her sitting above me, repeating, "Oh, Sweetheart," as she looked down at me trying to communicate with her grandmother who just wasn't there.
I sat on Her couch - barely gaping like his on the right - in front of the fishtank, now dry and void of any life - except bacteria - a far cry from the ocean'd microcosm that housed the plecostumus' and the red tailed shark. I wondered if he ever sits on this side, wondered if he ever has the curious mind like I do when thinking of the four walls of the sauna I've never seen from inside. Living someone's eyes for a moment, or - trying to- is he eager to see even the box from that angle? Pretend for a moment she is playfully rolling cigarettes over on his side? Does he imagine her print on the dolls on the chesterfield, along the banister? Can he even look at a cartooned green frog without succumbing to his lumped throat? Does he run the tap in the bathroom after he's gone? Does it hurt too much for him to even try?
Through the letters and photographs I find a keychain. Plastic, lettered, hearted and cauterized. It spells my name but doesn't feel like it belongs to me. I hold it, rolling its letters around the twine, inspect its blemishes - its heart now a circle; its D practically squared.

I don't know my age, but I'm younger than ten, and older than five. There's an event going on at school. Track and Field. It feels different. I'm frantic, running around the building, searching. Never one to step out of line, I start to cry when the bell rings realizing I'm without something I started my day with. I can't speak. I'm afraid of being seen while I sob. I notice E's hair next to the window in the classroom. It reaches her hips, sandy blonde, thick. Not a hair out of place. She's concerned.
"She needs to find something," she volunteered to the teachers worried look. "It means a lot to her and she lost it."
This is the beginning of what I can only describe as My Ailment. I lose things every day. I may find them again later, after I've stopped panicking, and, given up on searching, and most of the time these things are small. But on this day, I'd really done it.
"What's it look like?" Mrs. N asks me.
"It's a keychain.... its got... letters on it....and a heart....it says, 'Yaya'."
"Yaya...whats that?" She asked, forgetting I was about to implode.
"Can i please go look for it?" I pleaded with her.
Mrs. N conducted her class like she did her life, I'm guessing, because she let us do whatever we want all year. "You like art? You can paint all day! You like math? Here's the textbook." The only thing she ever insisted was that we were doing something, and she was keen on Australia so we seemed to gravitate toward that anytime there was a need for formal instruction. She also liked math games and flashcards, which is I think why my math skills are limited to the first eleven times tables.
I scoured the school. Perimeter'd the grass of the field. Our school was noted for its generous outdoors; unlike our intown counterparts whose playtime consisted of a cemented chain link recess, we had a lush yard filled with organized soccer, several monkey bars, and designated ball hockey/hackey sack areas. Normally i was glad to be able to find a spot in the yard where no one on earth could see me, but now, I berated this area for having even more space to lose this precious trinket.
"Don't worry, we'll find it. I'll help you." E reiterates, and I believe she is as hopeful as she seems. I'd always instinctively surrounded myself around less-than-scattered brains; and I'm not ashamed to say they've pulled me out of my self inflicted ruts too many times to count. I remember thinking she looked so angelic; her freckles bouncing off her face in the sun formed a new pattern every day, and her blue eyes matched her golden hair so perfectly, standing next to her I didn't have to tell anyone I didn't share her bewitching aura. I've always felt a strange inkling to embrace those willing to help me, and never let go. I could kiss their lips for as long as they'd let me. There have been times when I've felt True Love, sprouting from a circumstance that showed me kindness isn't always so hard to come by.

I never found it, and at the time I thought I would never forget the feeling. I haven't, because I still lose things, and I've lost things that are as irreplaceable and priceless as that. I remember things, but not until I discovered my own etched seven piece ornament in the box of forgotten mementos did I realize how lost these memories indeed were. In that box of paper and knick knacks, that keychain was the only memory I can remember suppressing, the only memory I'd created for myself. My mother and I bought Y that keychain from a place and time I don't recall, for no particular reason that I remember. It was pay-by-the-charm, and we kept it small with just the letters and the hearts. Friendship bracelets were big in those days, and after she was gone I remember thinking she wore out long before the chain could gradually slip away like it was supposed to. I remember thinking I had nothing else tangible her hands had touched, forgetting the polish she painted on my nails, forgetting that every moment of mine slumbered or awake in my own existence is a simple, extraordinary reaction to her's.