(Listen to this piece on season 2 episode 2.)
Back in the day when I only needed a training bra and no one used knew what a gif was, I would scoop up glittery pinks and bold fuchsias and carry them outside in hands that hadn’t ever touched a wine glass or wrote out a check. My sister and I would take a seat on a slab of concrete with a bottle of acetone and a few squares of 2-ply store brand toilet tissue and hunch over legs that had never ran after lovers or trotted us to college lectures and paint our toenails as the pitter patter or the whoosh whoosh or the sss sss of rain came down from the sky.
We’d paint our fingernails, one hand and then the other and sometimes we’d paint each other’s with patience and clumsy-kid-precision until those nail beds were covered. Way before we’d learned to cover our failures with lengthening work hours and hide our shames with blankets of denial or drown our insecurities in ice cream cartons or cardio binges. A car would drive by, wheels slicing through the rain’s little puddles, and we’d inspect our work with eyes that had never seen a friend’s betrayal or stared at an unexpected bill. Never glanced over a police report. And we’d smile. Happy we’d loved ourselves and each other that day. Unaware of the memories not yet painted onto our life’s canvas.
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