Present

My father bought me a bracelet for my 7th birthday. It was gold with only two charms: a horse and another object that now escapes me. Probably a book. He explained that he thought we could add one charm a year or one for every special occasion. It would be a type of project for us.

Writing this now reminds me of the tree he planted for me in the backyard of the home he had to leave and how, many years later, it was dug up and discarded because its roots would interfere with a new structure. There was a consensus not to tell him about it, although it was inevitable that he would discover it on his own at some point—playing basketball with my brother, say—and be forced to ask “oh, you got rid of the dogwood?” in that trained half-goodnatured, half-nonchalant tone he adopted so often around us in the space we all once lived but he was now a restricted visitor.

In the more-more child aesthetic, it was near unwearable; it needed more dangly things to really please the eye. But I was excited and I did wear it, studying the tiny pieces and letting their movement surprise the skin on my wrist. So when my maternal grandmother took me to the mall for the usual birthday shopping spree, and she saw the same emptiness I did, I didn’t try very hard to dissuade her from filling the spaces. What was intended to be a few supplemental charms turned into a collection of as many trinkets as the links would bear—a dog, a dolphin, a star, things that had nothing to do with who I was or what I valued. It was not that my grandmother didn’t understand me, just that she wanted to please me with gifts, with the gratification of receiving. She was a quintessential doter, soft and warm and perpetually smiling, and not related to me by blood although it took me years to fully understand that.

I have another birthday approaching. There were plans to spend it in Paris but I waffled on that. I see much appeal in spending the day alone, not answering the phone or text messages, drifting through the apartment and reading desultorily, doing a little yoga, making my own food. A few years ago, no one from my family called me on the day and particularly since then I’ve been inclined to enact a twenty four hour off-the-radarness. (I recognize the sad futility in this as it only means something if there are radars to be registered on.) I’m thinking about working in the evening.

This year the impending gift is not a token but the real deal: a horse. I may yet veto this. Or I may let it happen. (It is not, lest there be any confusion, from from my father.)

When my father saw the augmented bracelet, he made his frustration known. Whether it was his reaction or the sheer chunkiness of it, I never wore it again.