What's in a barrette?
Happy New Year!
Today, my mom and I stopped at a random pyjama store on Q. street in the Northern Metropolis, and as I was waiting for my credit card to run through the machine, a box of barrettes caught my eye. Not the ordinary flat barrettes that you see all the time, but the ones that ballerinas use to keep their hair buns in place. I hadn't seen one of those in years -- since my great grandmother died in 1996 -- and i instinctively took one out of the box and began to play with it. My great grandmother had hundreds of these all over her apartment -- even after she cut her braid and sported a short boy-cut for the last few years of her life, she still had them all over, and sometimes when I went over to her apartment on L. avenue, we would fiddle around with them, reminiscing about her hair, her life, her young adulthood, whose mysteries I marveled at. And then, instinctively, I would take one of her pliable barrettes, bend it straight and bite down on it nervously, the way you bite down on a toothpick, sometimes, to pass the time. Without thinking, I put the barrette in my mouth in the pyjama store, and it was as if she was there. Suddenly, completely, asking me if her bun was straight and in place. And for a minute, I wondered if my memory was playing tricks on me.
I walked out of the pyjama store with a barrette in my coat pocket.
Today, my mom and I stopped at a random pyjama store on Q. street in the Northern Metropolis, and as I was waiting for my credit card to run through the machine, a box of barrettes caught my eye. Not the ordinary flat barrettes that you see all the time, but the ones that ballerinas use to keep their hair buns in place. I hadn't seen one of those in years -- since my great grandmother died in 1996 -- and i instinctively took one out of the box and began to play with it. My great grandmother had hundreds of these all over her apartment -- even after she cut her braid and sported a short boy-cut for the last few years of her life, she still had them all over, and sometimes when I went over to her apartment on L. avenue, we would fiddle around with them, reminiscing about her hair, her life, her young adulthood, whose mysteries I marveled at. And then, instinctively, I would take one of her pliable barrettes, bend it straight and bite down on it nervously, the way you bite down on a toothpick, sometimes, to pass the time. Without thinking, I put the barrette in my mouth in the pyjama store, and it was as if she was there. Suddenly, completely, asking me if her bun was straight and in place. And for a minute, I wondered if my memory was playing tricks on me.
I walked out of the pyjama store with a barrette in my coat pocket.