stealth missions

these frames.  i have surreptitiously carried these frames out of my nana's basement over the course of the last year and a half.  every time i visit home i "clean the basement" for my grandmother and gather as many as i can fit in my suitcase without eliciting the suspicion of TSA, and bring them back to seattle.    she visited last weekend and was sort of stunned, and sort of amazed, and sort of thrilled that they were hanging on my wall.  it was weird.  

these along with a great many other things in my apartment are hers, or they were before i got my hands on them.  i usually ask in passing if i can take a few things with me when i leave, but these frames sort of just come along without permission.  she has buckets upon boxes upon baskets of them in the basement.  they sit next to old chairs, christmas ornaments, and boxes of food stowed away for a coming crisis.  these frames are part of the large collection of trinkets that i call my  joan-knacks, the things that remind me of her and her house; these objects are things that make her make sense to me.  they are the things that ensconce her walls, and her photos, and her pictures and paintings, they're the things she collects or keeps underneath her bed.  i explained the her i have in my head and why these frames are important to me.  she was sort of taken aback by the number of things i had in my apartment that looked "awfully familar," but she loved that they are part of my life now.  

as for the parasols, my love affair with parasols goes way back.  when i was little my aunt and cousin lived in the philippines.  jackie and molly would send me things from asia that they'd find in different markets.  one of my favorite gifts was a set of fantastic parasols.  petite umbrellas of dark burnished orange paper covered in ornate paintings of botany and asian characters.  i used to set them up on an old blanket in the living room while my mom watched china beach, a 1980's television show about Vietnam.  I would pretend I was in the philippines with Molly or that i too was in Vietnam.  What can i say, i have a thing for parasols.  They're part of my one childhood memory of actual imagination.  So, when aaron brought the orange one back from thailand last summer i remembered all of this and felt grateful.    

it isn't just reminiscing that i do with objects.  they just make my world make sense.  they are the small gifts given by friends, post cards from travelers, old photos curling at the edges, papers, letters, notes, measuring cups and surely gold frames and parasols.