It was my one and only juicy couture faze; I was about 8 or 9. This was the precursor to my tube top and platform faze (give me a break, you know all us 90s kids had one). I had this one shirt that was white with hot pink and orange writing that said “Juicy” and underneath it had a two digit number that I can’t remember anymore. I think it may have been 00. Anyway, I was attached to it and would show it off at any opportunity I could find (dress down days are rare in LS). To me, it was a “big girl” shirt: totally fashionable and trendy. I felt like the cat’s meow in it.
But then a terrible thing happened that took me by surprise. It was a growth spurt and now my super-stylish Juicy top made me look just a little too juicy. My mom deemed it necessary to revamp my closet to reflect my new change, so for several hours we cleaned out my closet. Shoes, pants, shorts, skirts, t-shirts, dresses. Some items were more difficult to part with than others given my pact-rat nature and irrational emotional attachment to odd objects (like that shirt). We quarreled over some specific items where I insisted that I would always wear and it that it still fit. Both sides had to make concessions. Unfortunately, she convinced a reluctant me that I looked a little ridiculous in my “juicilicious” shirt.
At the end of the cleaning session I sat on my bed to look at a huge heap in the middle of my room. Interrupting my admiration that all those items could actually fit in my closet with remaining clothes, my mother burst into the room holding three garbage bags. Knowing that my family never throws anything out, ever, I ask her why. She misunderstood my question and thought I was asking why I had to get rid of the clothes instead of why I was putting them in bags. A tirade ensued, but from it I gathered that we were going to send all the clothes to my cousins in Brazil who are not quite as large as their American-sized cousin.
The summer of my 11th birthday my family traveled to Brazil. At the airport a throng of distant but no longer distanced relatives surrounded my mom, my sister and me. Shrieking, bear-hugging, cheek pinching continued for ten minutes. I saw my cousin, a shy, bookworm girl who is two years my junior, and we had not spoken since the last time I was there. Partly because of my bad Portuguese, we had nothing to say to each other as the adults shuffled along putting our suitcases in the multiple cars. I looked over at her to give the “oh, adults” look and noticed that she was wearing my juicy couture “it” shirt! I pointed to it and said something like, “Hey! I remember that shirt. Do you like it?” or something awkward like that. We then had a whole icebreaking conversation about all the clothes I’ve sent her over the years and how she wears them all the time. I could tell that by these handed down clothes, that would just have curdled in my closet, connected to my Brazilian cousins to their distant cousins from the US. Not only did they now have “super-cool American” clothing, but to them, my sister and I seemed less abstract. We were more like an older family member you see on Christmas, Easter, birthdays, weddings, etc and receive our hand-me downs every so often. I passed down my love for a particular hard-worn shirt to my cousin, who can in turn wear it and make her own memories in it. In this way we are connected through spatial, cultural and linguistic boundaries.