Once, in the beginnings of a singular love, I traded two small clay beads for a sarong, worn by the woman I fell for that summer. We met beneath the moon and the white pines of the upper midwest, two figures in the night, shirking responsibility for that moment, for that pair of smiles. It would be several weeks until we saw each other again, each item in the trade filling a part in a long, unique story.

Over the following years, the sarong became a representation of her, a wrapping to letters, to memory as we traveled our own paths and dealt with the realities of a long-distance relationship, with the trials of a powerful love, play, and the difficulty of letting go.

It amazes me today, still, how many emotions are tied to the feeling of that material between my fingers - love, joy, fear, jealousy, pain, goofiness, warmth…

I no longer have that sarong - it has been placed away where powerful, beautiful memories need go if they are not to lead one’s life in nostalgia. I no longer have it, but catch a feel like that fabric and

wham!

instantly back in those moments, reading letters over distance, a lover held close by something once held close by her, all the emotions of the arc of the relationship boiling in at once.

Like the barest hint of a smell or a sound - memory triggers that we cannot let go of, cannot ignore.

It becomes something beautiful to pass on one day in story - to self, to friends, to children, because, isolated, the beginning of the memory will never cease to be powerful and amazing.

It becomes something beautiful to learn to say goodnight to, to learn to treasure without holding on too tightly, to ease the grip of memory on the present, and to breathe deeply.

It becomes something beautiful to say goodbye to.