Memory Collective IX
The Memory Collective is the recreation of a project I found on the internet one lazy afternoon at my office. The mission of the Memory Collective is to explore the nature of memory, specifically the act and art of remembering: how we do (and don't) put back together those fragments and shards, those fleeting images and lasting impressions, that reside in our memories. At the start of our project, participants each submit a memory fragment. Each fragment was then passed on to another participant to interpret through the lens of their own memory. Our memories are published as a series in this newsletter. I encourage you to notice what these memories bring up for you: images, emotions, stories, regrets, earworms. What exists on the periphery of our memory? If you missed them, here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth installments.
Sarabeth Domal remembers Kelsey Swintek’s memory:
Kelsey Swintek’s memory:
When I think of yellow, I think of my mother.
**
The bathroom is yellow before she lives in the house. Yellow cubic tiles under my toes. Not mustard, but not marigold. Muted lemon. Yellow shag bath rugs. Yellow bathtub, where I scream when she washes my hair.
It’s second grade. Miss Friedrichs is my teacher. My dress has clementine, bubblegum and buttercream flowers all over it. At school, I raise my hand when a question is posed to the class. People point at me and laugh. Or maybe just one person, but it feels like the whole world. For the rest of the day, I pretend my arms are glued to my sides. At home later, I cry. Am I scared? Embarrassed? I feel betrayed by my own body for the first time.
My cheeks swollen and sticky with salt, I’m in the yellow bathroom. My mother kneels before me and speaks in a sing-song whisper. I stretch my arm to the ceiling, reveal the curly wisps of black hair. Her razor is cold. It all goes away.
**
My mother says yellow is a happy color. I wonder now if yellow is still her favorite color, if it ever was her favorite color. If she believed that if it was her favorite color, she’d be happy. When we moved, she painted our whole house. I don’t remember the names of the colors, if they were Sherwin Williams or Behr or Benjamin Moore. I remember the walls, and these are the names I’d give them: lemonade, daffodil, banana cream, cultured butter, sunbeam, chardonnay.