As I was beginning to pack up and leave my first real family home in early Spring—alone, as I had reached the point of forcing my husband to leave several months prior—I took down the generously tasseled golden valances which I had regrettably hung in our bedroom only a year before, and thoughtlessly elected to wash them. I was washing everything at the time, as it were. I tossed them in the dryer, only to awake the next morning to discover that I had hellishly ushered in the Era of Tiny Golden Threads. They were everywhere. About two inches long each one, amassed in the thousands over each article of clothing in the oversized load.
For awhile, I attempted to quarantine the threads. Whenever we became really desperate for clothes—mid-separation I gave up on folding laundry for about four months and the girls and I fished valiantly each morning from several crudely distinguished piles on my bedroom floor—I would bravely turn to the contaminated pile and attempt to purify an article to return to the rotation. But, of course, there were always the ones who found their way past my frantic eye. They began to spread.
I’d pick a few off my jacket each day on my way into work. I’d pick a few off my daughters as they ran off for school. I’d vacuum them up off of the rugs that I just couldn’t get the smell of dog piss out of no matter what I tried. I’d pick them out of my white fur seat covers at QT while I was pumping gas.
They followed my daughters over to where my ex was staying, where they infected his brother’s home as well. It got so bad that one day, weeks later, my oldest came home and declared in distress that she even spotted one of the tiny golden threads on the carpet in her classroom that morning. We had officially started a plague.
The first few weeks, I’d be finding and tossing them by the finger-fulls each day. But eventually, as reason would have it, they finally began to slow down. I’d reliably find a dozen or so each day, and chastise myself as I paused to gather them. I moved into my new place on the first of May—an adorable, well-kept duplex rented to me by a remarkably tall and electric widow who loves classic rock and hazy boundaries debatably as much as I do. I would find a handful or so each day while I was unpacking. However, they were somehow becoming less of a nuisance and somewhat more endeared to my ever-tendering spirit: a perfect manifestation of that which I’d left behind, trailing me into this new life which I was trying to figure out how to gracefully create for myself. And so, I’d intentionally and dutifully throw them each away, thus purging myself of their implications.
May turned into June, the tiny golden threads dwindled along with the seeming acuity of my pain. I kept the girls busy outside. I worked. I took a lover. I signed the divorce and mortgage paperwork. By the end of June, whenever I found a tiny golden thread I would pause over it like a surprising grave and briefly attempt to decipher what I was feeling before I decisively disposed of it. The feeling that I decide on, aptly, is grief—with which I have been well-acquainted for many years, but this new form is somehow lighter, almost eager in itself. A distinctly more jovial form of its predecessor, phoenix-like in its intentions. The loss isn’t entirely a loss, then, I know. So I decide that the tiny golden threads will forevermore be considered divine, and I heretofore thank each one with genuine love and contrived perception for not leaving me entirely alone at this time. For serving as a titrated reminder of the mess I once found myself in and have since painstakingly corrected, at times with the help of others. For being so oddly beautiful and relevant in their own way, and for giving a surprising physicality to this emotional evolution.
It’s mid-July now. Tomorrow, we sign the closing paperwork for the house. It’s midnight. My youngest can’t sleep, she just crawled into the bed next to me after I caught her rifling though the kitchen drawer searching for adhesive tape so she can hang her Stitch poster up at her dad’s new house tomorrow night, which he just moved into four days ago. Her whole entire world has changed in the last eight months. But, as long as she has her Stitch stuffie, she usually finds a way to put a smile on her face. I’ve never met a braver person in my entire life.
Yesterday was my last day setting foot in our old home. Me and Ricky called that place ours for almost seven years. We raised our daughters there. We kept track of their growth on the door-jam by the deck, where we hosted countless birthday parties and gatherings. I stare at the spot on the living room floor where Lola had her first steps. I clean my kitchen for the last time and remember all the hours I spent cooking for my family and friends, feeling like the warm little center of something whole and good and worthwhile. I debate starting a fire. I step into our bedroom, which somehow still smells like me even after the painting and the staging. The only memory I can call to mind in that moment is crying alone in our bed on our last-ever wedding anniversary while he was an hour away in detox. I decide I hate this room most of all, but I know the venom is short-lived, so I close the door gently.
I go upstairs. I look at the walls which I’ve painted several times over for the girls—currently purple and blue—sit at the top of the stairs, take a deep breath in, and sob. I decide that it actually feels good to cry right now, so I decide to lean into it. I play our first dance song—which I’ve refused to listen to since the separation—on a loop, and really let myself go for awhile. At some point I become aware that I’m potentially going to bring some kind of harm to myself at this rate, so I decide to call in backup. I can’t take these keys off this key ring, leave them on the counter, and leave this house for the last time—alone. When I open my phone I have a notification from my dear friend, who has excellent cosmic timing. He has been present for every major stage of this process, from our last vacation together as a couple to reserving my U Haul to taking me to get printer ink for my divorce papers, to this now I decide. I text him back, and ask him to come help me, once again. As always, he shows up. I let him hold me while I cry for a few minutes, allow my breathing return to normal, then hurriedly have him walk us out. I didn’t see a single golden thread anywhere.
When I get home, I find one on my living room carpet for the first time in a week or two and carefully—like a child taking a ladybug back outside—bring it into my basement, find The Big Blue Box of my marriage, and lay it to rest within.
I know that one day months from now I’m going to find one of these threads, and it’s going to bring the biggest smile to my face. I won’t be able to help thinking of how far I’ve come since The Unraveling has occurred, how much I’ve had to do to start over, and how capable I am of creating my own world. Something which started out as such a logistical nightmare, impossible to even begin sorting through, has slowly and steadily come to pass.
Tomorrow when I sit at that table and sign away the home we worked so hard to build our family inside of away to some idiot who offered us way more money than it’s worth, I’m going to do it with a strange peace which I’m borrowing from the future, a lesson I’ve been taught by the tiny golden strings. One day, one of them will doubtlessly emerge from the dryer vent or the joints of the original wood floors or maybe even from under the oven, and some strangers who might as well be half a world away from me will never be able to understand or appreciate the significance of what they’ve found.
Because one cannot appropriately value something when they have no idea how massively difficult it was to create.
- Cierra Lowe, 2025