Carly's Bananas: In Memoriam: My Sunglasses, 2016-2018

First pic in 'the sunglasses'

We encountered each other in the duty free shop at the Madrid Barajas airport in summer 2016. I had 50 euro in my wallet left over from the ATM withdrawals that were fueled by my inaccurate estimation of how much spending money I’d need, let alone that I actually had. At a more responsible moment in my life, I would’ve backtracked to the currency exchange kiosk and forked over the money to get American dollars even at a terrible exchange rate. But as soon as I saw them I knew that was out of the question. Sitting past the oversized bins of Kinder eggs, and endless turn stands of Spanish postcards and paella spices, were the sunglasses of my dreams. Slim, lightweight, dark-lensed, easily-cleaned, navy blue Polaroid brand glasses. Without trying them on I knew they suited my face perfectly. But I tried them on anyway, and from that point on, I rarely took them off. And to seal the deal, they cost 48 euro, which left me with just enough to get a Milka bar for the road.

I’d had a bad track record with sunglasses. When I was younger, I never wore them. When I finally realized that my daily squinting was only going to lead to more fried eyeballs and forehead wrinkles, I opted for the cheapest options I could find. I had a hard time keeping track of things like that, and when I did keep track of them, I had a hard time not breaking them. I wore the fake RayBans for a few seasons, in red and light blue (you know the ones). Then I bought into the cat-eyed trend, and probably went through 4 or 5 pairs of tortoise shell shades that fell victim to various demises: from the arms falling off, to being left at restaurants, to vanishing without a trace. With these, I promised myself, it was going to be different.

And it was. They were the first sunglasses I'd spent more than $8 on, and because of that, the first ones I kept in a case, religiously. Whenever they weren’t safely tucked away in their oblong zipper case, they were perched on my nose, never slipping, never rubbing, just doing their job of blocking the unpredictable but often bright San Francisco sunshine, or more often the reflection of that sunshine in the fog. The sunglasses saw me at my best and worst times. They could be worn in gym clothes, or on fancy or professional occasions. They traveled with me, home from Spain, then home to Oregon, and to LA, Belize, Denmark, London and LA again. I skied in those glasses, and went on dates in those glasses, and cried behind those glasses. Sad tears on public transit, the morning after Trump became president and happy tears, when I learned I got into PA school on a phone call in an alleyway. Through those lenses, my eyes have seen oceans, and deserts and mountains and sunshine and better yet they’ve seen faces and smiles of so many people I love. Through those lenses, my eyes saw (ok I glanced for like two seconds but was careful not to look too long) the total solar eclipse. My time with those glasses rivals that of my longest romantic relationship, and in many ways was equivalently, if not more, intimate.

From L to R: At beach, with a dog, canoeing, with 'the sunglasses'

In October, at the Hardly Strictly Blue Grass Festival, an event I’ve lovingly attended for 4 straight years, I wore the glasses one more time. At the end of the afternoon, when the sun started dipping below the tree line, and the crowd did one squirmy, synchronized wave as everyone reached towards their Patagonia pullovers, I put my sunglasses in my purse, as I’d done so many times before. I’d left the case at home, because it was one less thing to carry. When I took them out the next morning, I found that the glasses' right arm had split in two; a casualty of the beer-filled backpack I’d squished all my belongings into at the end of the night. In the moment, I grabbed them frantically, and dug through to find the broken remnant. “Super glue” I thought, “it’ll fix them right up!”. But I knew then that even the extra strong stuff would, at best, temporarily hold them together. The end had come for my beloved sunglasses.

I set my sunglasses on my nightstand for a few days, not because they needed to be honored-- I know the glasses weren’t alive, and that eulogizing them is at best, satirical and at worst, insulting. But I also knew that for over two years, they were my most reliable accessory and I felt better when I was wearing them. And that feeling, as silly as it is, is something I’ll miss. Until I order a replacement pair on Amazon, that is.