If you trace the breadcrumb of a memory, where will it lead? Somehow, always back to the present.

I sit watching the smoke from my essential oil diffuser drift in front of the window and then blow back towards my face in swirling whisps. The vapor strands pull on the threads of a memory.

Seventeen, working at Concession Stand 6 in the baseball stadium of the minor league team in my hometown. In the backroom of the stand, which was just the cinderblock-walled negative space behind and beneath the bleachers. Twirling paper cones along the sides of a metal vat blowing hot air across flavored sugar and turning it into cotton candy. Errant strands floating upward and melting on contact with skin, face, hair. Tracing pink, blue, and violet patterns like slug trails across my maroon polo shirt.

The Doors playing on the boom box someone brought from home, along with a faux-leather CD book bursting at the seams. We are high school kids acting like adults, learning how to do tasks we don't enjoy for money. But at least we get to choose the music we listen to.

A kid a few years older than me from one of the rural high schools I ran cross country against takes off his uniform to spin cotton candy, revealing an oversized t-shirt with The Doors emblazoned across it. I say something like "cool shirt," indicating I like it, and he looks down to remind himself which crumbled item he grabbed from the pile of laundry before he left the house.

"You like the Doors?"

"Yeah, I love Jim Morrison," I gush, like so many teenage girls throughout the decades.

"You wanna borrow it," he asks earnestly. I pause, but before I can answer, he takes it off, thrusting it towards me. "No, really. I have a ton of shirts like this one."

Out of politeness, I take the shirt and thank him. I bring it home and wash it and wear it to bed as a nightshirt. I gave it back to him a few weeks later, and he brought me another one that I don’t think I ever returned. It was a white t-shirt with that famous bare-chested close-up of Jim Morrison with arms spread, and his life span noted in the dates below his portrait: December 8, 1943 - July 3, 1971.

A poster depicting Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain in a Dali-esque melting clocks-type landscape with the caption "Forever 27" hung on my bedroom wall in high school. At the time, 27 seemed like a lifetime away. My mom was 27 when she gave birth to me, her first child of four. My dad was 27 (and 11 and 1/2 months, he specifies) when my parents married. But with just a few clicks of the slide advancer on the projector machine of my life, I'd find myself at that age.

Living in San Francisco and going through my own seismic transition into adulthood. The first friend I had ever lost died in a freak fire two months into his 28th year. Then, I was dumped in a long-distance relationship with the phrase, "I just don't see how this fits into the day to day." I was desperately trying to claw my way out of manual labor jobs and prove my worth in the corporate world and was anxious to find my footing in life. And I was on the precipice of a toxic relationship that would span six years. I was lost and searching, terribly homesick, and felt incredibly alone.

It seems there’s no escaping the 27 Club. It just looks a little different for everyone. I couldn't have known going into it, and thank God. Instead, much like Jim Morrison, I charged full-steam, head-on into my future without trepidation. But, unlike him, I got through those difficult years with momentum propelling me into the decade that followed.

And now, at 37 (and 11 and 1/4 months), reflecting back on the naïveté of 17, the ennui of 27, and the labor pains of this past year, the swirling smoke calls me back to the beauty of my winding path. Forging ahead without the benefit of perspective and trusting that, whatever happens, however painful the process may be, I will break on through.

Credits

Ambo by The Album Leaf.

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