A Tribute to the Striped Brown Jacket

Somewhere, there is a striped brown jacket.

Maybe it's hanging on a tree.

Maybe it's in the back of someone's car.

Maybe it's even on someone's back.

And maybe they even checked the pockets, and happened to read a slightly important and meaningful letter, which was hidden on the inside.

But wherever it happens to be, it isn't on my back. 

And that worries me.

Three years ago, the striped brown jacket found me (half asleep) as a gift from my stepdad. It was soft and warm and way too big for me. Plus, the zipper was on the wrong side.

It was the best security blanket I had ever seen.

...

It got stuck on a pole while we were playing tether ball at recess in sixth grade.

It stood up with me as I read out loud a response I had written for a reading test. (The passage was about Elmer, and how scared I am of heights.)

It was used as a rope of safety to pull kids across a tight rope wire strung across two trees.

It sat in my lap on the bus ride back from outdoor lab, as I tiredly asked Elmer why his eyelashes were so long, and he tiredly asked me if he needed to cut them, and we tiredly ended up completely asleep, subconsciously trying not to fall onto each other.

It went with me to middle school.

It was there that time I killed Quoc.

It sat in an empty orchestra room as I played my first real concert.

It held pencil after pencil after broken pencil in the roomy pockets which are now riddled with holes because of them.

It got rained on at the airport.

It got discolored from the sun.

It got slept in on a hardwood floor on the most scariest night of my life.

It got cried on.

It got drooled on.

It got laughed on.

It got completely covered in a snowstorm, along with my glasses, and everything else we couldn't see.

Its pockets held countless snowballs, thrown with great aim and precision. 

It accepted them willingly.

It got a bit of permanent paint on the edge of its sleeve in art class.

It was worn by a three-year-old girl who got cold at the grocery store.

It was worn by a teenage girl who got cold in the wind.

It was worn by another teenage girl who got cold in life.

And it was worn by me.

It was a blanket, a tent, a rope, a winter coat, a hiding place, an identity, and a friend. Before, I was the girl in the striped brown jacket. The striped brown jacket knew me like no one ever could. It's been across an ocean. It's been across a life. It's spent the past three years covering the arms of a tree monster, and I think it's done its job.

What worries me now is not that its gone.

What worries me is that maybe - wherever it is, and whoever may have found it - maybe they don't know its story. Maybe they don't know it's been through sand and snow and storm. Maybe they don't know it met a hailstorm as it fell. Maybe they don't know it's seen a hawk dive out of the clouds. Maybe they don't know about that bus ride, that orchestra concert, that snowball fight, that story - everything that ever happened to it in the past three years.

Everything that happened to me.

I left it on a tree, of course. 

It's not like anyone would steal something as worthless as that old rag. There's probably more holes than fabric in it anyway. But when I went back for it, it was gone. It was nowhere to be found.

I pointed to the tree. "I think it's gone," I said.

"Your jacket?"

"...Yeah."

"Whoa. That's kind of a big deal, isn't it?"

"No, it - she - there was a letter in the pocket, and..."

"You've had that for a while, haven't you?"

"Oh, just catching on now? Really, Elmer?"

"They're giving out free balloons over there."

Elmer was carrying a yellow balloon without a string. He was balancing it between his hands. 

He doesn't seem to notice things.

I punched it towards the sky, forgetting that rule about how sometimes balloons go up and not down.

"Shady!!"

"I forgot!"

"Well it's gone now."

We stood in the crowd and watched it float.

"It always belonged to the sky."

I'm not yet sure if that thought is comforting. But it's still nice to watch things go up.