Archeology of the Self

Or, Objects I Cannot Throw Away

To spring clean is to oscillate in dissonance: between nostalgia and detachment, sentiment and absurdity. One moment I wonder when or why I bought something (or, in more severe cases, I find an object with indiscernible origin and purpose). The next, a treasure. I recently uncovered, in the very last vacuum sealed bag from our cross-country move, a blanket. Not just any blanket, but a hand-knit, white cotton baby blanket. My baby blanket. The baby blanket my Abuela, my mother’s mother, gifted me before I even left the hospital, ears freshly pierced and cheeks so chubby I would forever be known to my father as Bolita.

It’s one of few treasures that has made its way from Mexico City to London to Portland to Mexico City to Durham to San Francisco to Brooklyn. To spring clean is to conduct an Archeology of the Self: it’s looking through the coat pockets of a vintage fur coat that smells just like my mother. It’s sorting through my collection of my grandmother’s pearls – separating them from the costume jewelry I’m also so fond of. It’s coming face to face with the single-purpose kitchen tools of projects past. With tangled collections of craft supplies and tech gadgets and cat toys.

I’ve held on to things I shouldn’t have and let go of things I wish I’d kept. But in the boxes I’ve carried across continents, in the perfume-soaked linings and the tangled yarn and the silk scarves, I see the outline of a life – my life – in familiar fragments.

So here is a short list of those objects. The ones that I’ve kept so far and will keep going forward. Objects that remind me of who I am and where I came from. Objects that, in many cases, belonged to women of admirable greatness. Self-appointed heirlooms.

I suppose we all have our reliquaries. Here is mine.

1. My baby blanket. It’s white and cotton and small and soft. The rows are neat and the tension even. My Abuela didn’t knit much. Unlike my Abis – my paternal grandmother and an avid maker of crochet lace – my Abuela only knit baby blankets. And only for her nietos and nietas. To most, it might seem ordinary, but to me it is everything. It lives neatly folded, away in its box, awaiting the day when it brings new comforts to new life.

2. My rebozos. All of them. An introduction is neither needed nor worthy. I have many, and I love them all.
   
   

3. The fork earrings my brother’s ex-girlfriend’s mother gifted me a decade ago. True vintage cocktail forks. Turned into earrings. Treasure, old, recycled into treasure, new.

4. A cast iron comal. Presently in need of a good scrub.
   
   

5. A black and white photograph of my father, aged four or five. He is wearing a trash can as a hat, and only one huarache. He is in my grandmother’s courtyard, and he just looks so pure and so happy. A reminder of the children we all once were.
   

6. My JSTOR hat.
   

7. A rebozo box without a rebozo. The finest of rebozos come in a wooden box, or baúl. I house my rebozos elsewhere, neatly folded in a designated drawer. But the box, empty of cloth, I keep front and center. On a bone inlay buffet table from India. It houses many smaller everyday treasures, like match boxes from our favorite restaurants and napkin rings from my mother’s house.
   

8. My mother’s watch.
   

These are the treasures I carry. A growing reliquary. Reminders of old homes in new places. Family. History. Caprichos. I don’t know what I’ll add next year. Or if there is anything I’ll forget. But these are the things that remain. The things that keep me tethered. To my mother(s). To my whims.