Turtles
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My mother began wearing turtles shortly after beginning therapy. Turtles, she explained to me years ago, symbolize this new period for her. Turtles are slow. When they're scared, they retreat into themselves, knowing they can stay there for as long as they need. But when it is time, turtles slowly pull their heads out, poke out their four stubby legs, and move forward. For years afterwards, every birthday and Christmas would mean a gift box from me full of turtle jewelry: pins mostly, gaudy or subtle, silver or gold, vintage or new, always cheap though. We lost things all the time, she and I. Nothing made us retreat into our shells more quickly than our stupidity costing someone else good money. When she died, my dad gifted it all back to me, arriving in a box with my mother's old sweaters. My fiance walks in on me breathing in their smell. The turtles were old, mostly broken, missing gems, their pins bent, their legs and heads snapped off. But mom kept them, and so do I, the misfit family of them, living in my office, alongside a slim book my father also sent along. It was a gratitude journal my mother began keeping, never imagining that she would be dead within the month. It took nearly a year for me to open it. When I did, I saw every entry was about me.
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Credits
- Writers
- Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz