Maria Arozamena, Illustrations Editor
When I was ten years old, living in Miami, my mom bought me a journal from Anthropologie. I had owned plenty of journals before — those plasticky neon pink diaries with locks and keys, adorned with cute kittens, puppies and rainbows. But this one was different. It was wrapped like a mummy in dark blue denim, the kind that fades over time, softening with age. On the cover, there was a coal-black fox twisted into the shape of an “S.” The fox had a pointed muzzle, whiskers, pink cheeks and a mischievous grin, as if it too could read through my private thoughts. Yet the fox stood guard against anyone who dared pry into my words. Flowers wrapped around the fox’s body as it appeared to zoom through the air like a flying dragon, paws extended before its muzzle in a Superman position.
I never just wrote in that journal. I filled it. The journal was packed with a myriad of tiny, unnecessary objects, stuffed plump like a Thanksgiving turkey. The presents buried within told more of a story than the words themselves.
A ticket to “Aladdin” on Broadway.
A single piece of silvery horsehair in a Ziploc.
Photobooth strips from high school formals and proms.
A printed copy of a story my friend dedicated to me years ago.
Daisies and pansies, dulled over time but still clinging to their former beauty.
A ruby-red plastic sequin from a friend I haven’t hugged in years but who still knows me better than most.
Letters covered in silly stickers from a pen pal.
A maple leaf from a place that no longer exists as it once did.
A hospital wristband.
The journal still sits at home, somewhere among other forgotten relics of childhood. But if I close my eyes, I can still feel it in my hands — the slightly rough denim of the cover, the cloth of the fox. I can smell the musty, unlined vanilla-colored pages as I flip through them, the weight of all the little objects pressing against each other, memories packed so tightly, they might spill over if I open it again. I remember how I used to trace the fox’s body over and over, following the perfect symmetry of the letter “S.”
S as in smooth.
S as in soothing.
S as in simple. Safe. Sanguine. Satirical. Sincere.
When was the last time I opened that diary? The last time I peered into the black beady eyes of that fox?
I’ve continued my collection in different ways. I have so many new things my guardian fox would approve of: a small black pebble from a Bacchanal, a folded-up newspaper, a VIP red wristband, a “Chicago” playbill. Objects are like portkeys, transporting me from the present to the past. They anchor me to moments I don’t want to forget, fragments of who I was and who I’m still becoming.
I know I’m a memory collector. I scrapbook moments behind the guile of my S-shaped fox. I hold onto little things and cherish them, clasping them close to my chest. Maybe it’s because I know that memories fade, that people leave, that places change. Maybe it’s because I fear forgetting, because I believe that some moments are too precious to be lost to time.
While I’ve run out of room in my fox journal, I have a running 17-page Google Doc of poems I’ve written since the beginning of last semester. They recount dusty memories that feel like they happened ages ago. A lifetime has been lived in these mere six months. I hold onto the memories as if they were as important as the events themselves, storing them in the form of free verse poems, pressed flowers and leaves in my DS books, ticket stubs from baseball games, and seashells to keep time from causing them to slip away like symbols etched into the sand before the ocean washes them clean.
And yet, no matter how much I collect, I know that no one can ever fully know me — not even the pages of my journal. There are always parts of ourselves we keep hidden, pieces that slip through even our own grasp. Some parts we haven’t even discovered yet. And maybe that’s okay.