We are all in the process of becoming who we were born to be…I invite you to share my journey.  Selene

I am sitting on my bed in my parent’s house on my wedding day unwrapping the last minute gift of a friend, another set of 100% cotton towels, these a solid shade of earthly brown.  They will go well with everything orange my absolute favorite color, and for me the color of my entire adolescence growing up in the sixties and seventies.  The Sunkist Orange I painted my room at fourteen will now follow me into my marriage and into my new home.  How many sets of towels do we have now?  I am not sure but I know my mother is meticulously writing down each gift with its mandatory thank-you note awaiting my thoughtful penmanship.   I am so young again in this moment, I can even feel the butterflies fluttering as I held this towel for the first time anticipating my walk down the aisle later that day.  Now it so faded, I don’t know if I can even call it brown any longer but it is softer than it was when it was new and for the umpteenth time in my life I consider tossing it into the ragbag. But once again I remember wrapping it around my wet young body in anticipation of my glorious life yet to unfold and once again I decide to hang on to it a while longer, who knows it may still contain some of the magic I use to feel when I was wrapped loosely in its new threads.

I set aside the beginning of the pile and take the next towel from the heap; it is a solid white towel, my husband’s favorite, it is small and as thin as parchment.  It couldn’t possibly dry him any longer but he won’t hear of it making its way into the ragbag.  It can no longer make its way around his waist but he will call me when he is in the shower and ask can you get me a towel, that white one, he will say and although we have other white ones, thick, long, luxurious, Egyptian cotton towels, I know the one he wants is small and as thin as parchment.  It is his towel, it is so interesting to me the things we attach ourselves to and hold tight long after their apparent usefulness is gone.  But has it? Who is to say? Not me, as I match the thin corners together and continue riding the threads of my memories.

101 Dalmatians, my son is twenty-two years old now but this beach towel still weaves its way through my laundry cycles.  The reds, blacks, and yellows are still bright and the cotton is still thick and absorbent but I have no idea who left this towel at our house.  Obviously its owner was some little boy who came to swim in our pool and left it and never returned to reclaim it.  It is never one I would have bought because never has there been a character as evil in my young son’s mind as Cruella Deville.  He was terrified of her and after watching Glen Close in her riveting Disney portrayal of this dastardly character he was unable to sleep for weeks, for years he remained frightened of her name.  But I keep it, to remind me of that little boy that once I could reassure Cruella Deville would never be able to get by me to get to him.  I am no longer powerful to give such reassurances.  But I match the red thick corners together and let my mind and my fingers linger in the folds of this memory.

I glance at the pile still heaped on the counter, the edge of the 1972 calendar dishtowel my mother owned that I inherited when she died peers from the depths.  It is still intact in every way as are the memories of the year my husband and I began dating.  I see the date, November 1^st a Wednesday and remember clearly.  The seventeen year old boy, a Senior, waltzed into my geometry class just as I had found my desk before the bell had rung and kneeled down beside me flashing that incredible smile and those brown eyes asking me for my phone number.  I was so impressed by his bravery; I was not the kind of girl boys easily approached and never with a room full of classmates to bear witness to their effort.  Then as the bell rung he stood to leave and leaned forward and kissed me on my cheek and said I will be calling you.  The blush that arose on my cheeks was crimson. I had not given him my number but he was so self-assured as he glanced over his shoulder at me as my teacher Mr. Hecht escorted him to the door.  I knew he would call and that night he did call me.  High school sweethearts then, now an old married couple encompassed and intertwined by threads of every weave and color imaginable bearing witness to our lives.

I am struck by the haphazardness and the order simultaneously coexisting in this hodgepodge of memories.  There are the pristine guest towels, the dye stained hair color towels, the painting towels, the dusting towels, the drying towels, the towels of every color scheme my bathrooms have been in the last thirty-five years.  There are designer towels and Walmart towels, there are his mother’s towels and my mother’s towels, and there are stranger’s towels.  And somehow together they are our towels; in their separateness is their sameness.  It is the unfolding of my life, and I am struck in this moment by the awesome order in the chaos of this pile of towels.  And although the light of this new day is no longer dancing on my walls and awakening my colors it unfolds invisibly and I am aware of its beauty and I am thankful to be here in this moment matching corners and folding, matching new corners and folding, in this, the menial tedious task of living, the unfolding of my life.