A Reliquary of Trinkets Pt. 1

In Arturo Schomburg's "The Negro Digs Up His Past," his first few lines call me to action:

"The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future--History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generations must repair and offset. So among the rising democratic millions we find the Negro thinking more collectively, more retrospectively than the rest, and apt out of the very pressure of the present to become the most enthusiastic antiquarian of them all."

And I asked myself: How could I not be an enthusiastic antiquarian?

Most of the relics in my mother's and grandmother's China cabinet do not align with the formal name of the wood-and-glass fixture that looms over us during family dinners. My grandmother filled hers with etched crystal and figurines that looked like my cousins and me. My mother collected wine glasses adorned with Ankara patterns and animal prints. The glass was see-through, but the shelves were mirrors, reflecting the traditions we held dear and the keepsakes we hoped our children would inherit, whether heirloom or discount-store imitation.

Our home was adorned with paintings of Black people by Leroy Campbell, Sekanwa Gi, Arlene Case, Charles A. Bibbs, and Boscoe Holder, and with poetry books, memoirs, and non-fiction by Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou on our shelves.

The home I grew up in was a reliquary for all that was holy to us.

My mother insisted on painting white department store Santas Black. The angels on our Christmas cards had melanin. Her love of earth tones rested in every pillow, blanket, and vase. When I later found the words "tailor" and "seamstress" in early twentieth-century records of my great-grandparents, I was not surprised. My grandmother had already stitched the lineage into my childhood skirts.

Everywhere I turned, there was an insistence that I remember.

This weekly series, A Reliquary of Trinkets, grows from that inheritance. Each week, I gather the small things that represent my present passions, anxieties, and curiosities. Books by Black folx, scraps of paper, meaningful jewelry, inherited fabric, wilting flowers, and the simple tools of my days become a way of learning to read my life through the objects I carry and the ones that hold me.

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Ad Meloria

I beat cancer this year.

I graduated from Harvard this year.

I am still pondering my next steps.

A year ago, I thought I knew what my future would hold. These last months have rearranged those ideas.

What are the relics of my survivorship?

Evidence of my becoming?

Returning to a former self?

For my birthday, my boyfriend bought me a gold necklace, a trinket if you will, with the words Ad Meloria. "Ad meliora" means "to better things" or "toward better things." It is often used as a reminder to strive for improvement and growth. A more extended version, semper ad meliora, means "always toward better things."

I might not know my next steps, but I am indeed moving toward better things. This crossroads has required me to reach for parts of myself I have not called upon in years. Sometimes we forget we have created healers within us, practices that keep us steady, and echoes that rise when we need them most.

I had to imagine myself as a conjurer and believe that I could magic myself back into being.

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It started with my father bringing home a thrifted suitcase. It was thin, did not fit much, and seemed insignificant among the Telfar bags I have collected. Yet every time I walked past it, it called to me.

Why?

Was it because I was a teaching fellow in higher ed?

Was it the urge to cosplay as a professor before I truly became one?

Was I forcing myself to carry less? The world was too heavy for me to be synonymous with Erykah Badu's bag lady.

Was it the desire to honor my father's customs?

I could not shake it. While visiting my parents, I went to his home office to ask if I could borrow the briefcase. He agreed.

I carried it to two classes and was delighted by how it held only my iPad, one book, and sometimes my wallet. Later, catching my reflection in a bookstore window, I realized something. I was not inventing a new version of myself. I was returning to an old one. A girl in a brown sweatsuit, plaid trenchcoat, and thrifted briefcase who once wore fedoras and tweed vests because she loved old things and because the 2009 recession forced her to thrift.

I was never cosplaying. I wore what called to me. Back then, classmates questioned why I avoided trends. Those same classmates now visit my digital reliquary, asking for guidance in genealogy and historical research.

And I welcome them.

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Ephemera as Evidence

Scraps of paper have become a quiet recurrence on my desk. Junk journaling, a calming practice of layering fragments into coherence, has slipped into my ministry. There is something sacred about telling a story through what is torn, leftover, or nearly discarded, yet insists on being seen.

This week's scraps feel like a syllabus the ancestors assigned me.

They begin with African print quilt swatches from the final project in the Black Liberatory Pedagogy class I supported at Harvard. Students stitched theory, color, and liberation into fabric. I keep a few remnants near me as if they still hum with the noise of the classroom.

Then there is Azurest Blue from the Saint Heron Community Library, honoring architect, educator, and artist Amaza Lee Meredith. My partner grabbed it for me at the latest pick-up in NYC. Her work reminds me that Black women have been designing worlds long before we were invited into them.

And finally, two bookmarks from Grey Matter Books in Connecticut. Langston Hughes looks out with a steady gaze. Romare Bearden is mid-collage, forever piecing the Black world together. They follow me from room to room, resting inside whatever text I tend to.

Individually, these scraps might seem incidental. Together, they feel like breadcrumbs pointing somewhere I have not yet arrived.

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The Books That Held Me

I have been deep in the world of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, studying her layered life and her troubled marriage to Paul Laurence Dunbar. Akasha Hull and Eleanor Alexander's work offers the tenderness and clarity her story deserves. And to be very honest...a whole lot of TEA.

I found myself driving through the neighborhoods where Dunbar-Nelson once lived. Wilmington, West Medford, and New York City began to feel like living footnotes. There is something powerful in tying geography to the text. Standing where she once stood makes the archive feel like a presence rather than a mere record of history.

I have also been working through the #GiveUsEachDay journal challenge on Substack, named for Hull's edited version of Dunbar-Nelson's diary. It has been emotional to center the words of Black women whose books sat on my mother's shelves. My childhood feels as if it has resurfaced on my adult desk, past and present sitting together in quiet conversation.

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Brown as Ancestral Technology

Lately, brown has been following me. Brown press-on nails, a deep brown Stanley, a brown Telfar, a Savage X Fenty brown sweatsuit, the brown briefcase my father thrifted, and the brown-toned books and ephemera scattered across my desk.

At first, I thought I just liked the color. The more it appeared, the more it felt like something older moving through me. Brown has always been an ancestral technology. It is the palette my mother and grandmother curated long before I understood why. It is the color of cherished wood, repainted figurines, rust, soil, leather, archives, skin, and memory. Brown steadies me. Brown returns me to myself. When I reach for it now, I am not choosing an aesthetic. I am selecting the ground beneath my feet.

And so I close out last week surrounded by trinkets that were never small. Each one is a portal, leading me to a new rabbithole or understanding. A necklace reminding me to move toward better things, a briefcase that reintroduced me to an older version of myself, scraps of fabric and paper humming eagerly for my hands and glue to place them into metaphor, books that refuse to let me forget where I come from. I am learning, again, that the archive is not behind me. It is on my desk, in my lap, in my hands, in the now—a reliquary unfolding in real time.

Until the archive calls again,

Erica