Obsessive-Compulsive

I have this “Pocket-Size Photo Album” that’s from the eighties; the pages fell out,

and there is a sticky, adhesive film that causes some loose photos to stick together.

It’s not mine, it was my mother’s.

The first picture in the album is of my mother before I was born. She is sitting on a velvet, floral-print sofa.

The protective sleeve covering the photo has some smudges on it.

There are paper dividers in each sleeve, separating the photos, one photo in front and one behind.

The paper has yellowed, maybe from time and oxidation,

and probably tar and nicotine.

I remember the tar-yellowing walls, my father’s comic book collection, boxes full of collectibles.

There is a picture of me on my first birthday.

My mother

is holding me and I’m sitting on her lap,

we are seated at a table with a table cloth with diagonal blue and white stripes on it.

My outfit

is bright yellow and I’m wearing a bright yellow party hat that says “Happy Birthday” on it in red and is sprinkled

with graphics of colorful ribbons and bits of confetti.

I am reaching for the ugliest, most eighties-looking birthday cake I’ve ever seen.

It has a 3D clown wearing a party hat on it.

I can’t deal with the picture of me, about three or four years old, with the purple pants

and the chic, shag haircut that my mother had me get, the one that

caused people to ask me if I was a boy or a girl.

At any rate, I looked like I was ready to audition for the Beatles.

In another picture, I am holding a square, yellow block in my hand; I’m holding it out as if to show it to the person behind the camera.

Or maybe I’m taking it back.

I wear a scrunched up expression,

I look angry or annoyed.

Another picture shows me wearing yellow sweatpants that are tucked into white socks; in it I’m sitting on some weird, satin, maroon-colored bedspread.

My stuffed-animal Feivel is on the bed next to me.

Yet another picture has me sitting in a cardboard box

with a bunch of yellow toys.

My earliest memory

is leaving a mall or shopping center with my mother. I was holding

a red balloon

and accidentally let it go.

I cried as it floated away.

I was never really interested in having a favorite color.

Years ago when someone asked me

what my favorite color was,

I said yellow because it’s happy.

I don’t remember being in any of the pictures in this

“Pocket-Size Photo Album,” but I am surprised by the number of things that are yellow.

Maybe it was something,

anything,

my mind held onto.

I brushed super glue onto the inside of the album cover’s spine.

I didn’t do a very good job when I stuck the cheap binding of the pages onto the glue.

The distance from the front cover’s bottom edge to the pages is longer than the distance

from the top edge to them; the distances are perfectly asymmetrical,

much like most things I’ve tried to do perfectly in my lifetime.

By Melissa Lemay

From: United States

Website: https://melissalemay.wordpress.com