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I was six years old when my sister received a little craft book for her birthday. It was a painfully 90's, bedazzled book on how to make friendship bracelets. I may have had thumbs for finger at that age but, as with all of my sister's interests, I considered bracelet-making my new hobby. I spent months working out how to do the simple knots, consistently cutting the string too short at the start because I couldn't fathom how much the bracelet would shrink as I knotted it 500 times (it's okay, they still make great bookmarks). I was just mastering the simplest bracelets while my sister was tackling the most complex ones at the end of the book. I don't know that I looked up to my older sister necessarily, I just didn't know why I couldn't do anything she could do. And so I persisted.

When I was nine years old, I spent two months out of school when my Obāchan was dying. My mother, my sister and I flew to Japan to spend every day in the hospital room with her. I was too young to understand the finality of the situation, but I knew everyone was sad. Every day, my sister and I drew pictures of heaven in coloured pencils and made friendship bracelets at the foot of the hospital bed for her. I couldn't remember ever being in a hospital prior to that spring, but spending 8 hours in one room and eating in the cafeteria there each day felt normal in no time. I'm still convinced they had the best ramen in the world; one perfectly semi-cooked half egg in each bowl.

Bracelet-making was overtaken by other hobbies in high school. It was cooler to play the guitar and sing, and I'd picked up reading and writing. But now and then, I'd dig up my old zipper bag of finished bracelets and wonder what to do with them. Technically, my first "business venture" involved a 14 year old me selling bracelets at a concert in a park that my friend organised. I didn't sell many, but making $3-$8 off those I did was a thrill I wasn't expecting to feel. Little did I know that in about 10 years I'd be selling coffees for $5 out of my own cafe. Apparently that entrepreneurial spirit was in me all along.

My best friend moved to Adelaide soon after that concert, leaving an empty space in an already depressed teen's world. We had come out to each other as bi the previous year, and leaned on one another through experiences that only in retrospect am I calling traumatic. She found queer allies at her new school, and I still remember her asking me to make and send over two rainbow bracelets for her and her new friend. I wasn't convinced that she actually liked friendship bracelets that much, but she found a way to want one. Everything felt so meaningful during that time.

Now at 27, I still have that zipper bag of finished bracelets, and I still know how to make more. That chunky craft book has long since gone missing, and with it, some of the more complex patterns that my six year old self never perfected. It's been some years since friendship bracelets were in fashion, and I don't even wear them myself. But I've never been able to toss that zipper bag, or the dozens of coloured string in various drawers of my house. Somehow this silly craft has accompanied so many memories and the wrists of people no longer in my life. To say that making friendship bracelets brings me joy is a simplification of the sentimental attachment I have for the hobby. And so, every year or two I'll cut some coloured threads, longer than I think I need to, and start knotting.