Object-ives #44: The Binder I Can’t Leave Behind

When love comes catalogued and three-hole-punched

Jul 24, 2026

After the graduation ceremony, I met my parents in the lobby of their Beverly Hills hotel, a swanky place, my father had called it. A few steps up from their usual Marriott or Holiday Inn because my mother had forgotten to make a reservation and everything with a more reasonable price tag was already booked. How the hell did ya forget? It’s been on the calendar for four years, for Chrissakes. My father’s voice echoed off the crystals dripping from the massive chandelier over our heads.

He ordered drinks and shrimp cocktail for him and my mother. Even though I’d been a vegetarian since the sixth grade, he double and triple checked I didn’t want one (Who doesn’t like shrimp cocktail?). I watched him finger the box of Tiparillos in his coat pocket while my mother passed over presents wrapped in the blue and gold of my university: A portfolio with spaces for a legal pad, business and credit cards, a pen with my alma mater’s name, and a crest in gold on the navy cover. A leather shoulder bag with my initials burned onto the outermost flap, so you can lug around all those legal briefs and whatnot at Georgetown next year, my father boomed, though we both knew this was his first time seeing it. A baby blue box with diamond studs that I’d lose within the year. Yet another gold cross, this one with a rose in the center, to remind you of what’s important, my mother whispered.

I brought you something, my father said as we waited for my mother to return from changing into something warmer (Los Angeles not warm enough for you? my father had asked her retreating back) before heading to dinner, another swanky place, this time in Malibu. I remember the shock of surprise at his words, the way it spread from my chest like melting butter on the English muffins my mother ate every morning, filling in all the holes and gaps.

From under his chair, he pulled a binder. He used the same two-inch maroon binders for everything: tax documents, house projects, medical information, legal documents, family papers, circuit board designs, work orders, client projects—each one in a separate binder, so that they ringed his office and bled into the back rooms, towering over us like bricks, each with a label written in his cramped letters.

He shook it at me when I hesitated, and I gripped it, taking it from him slowly, with two hands, as if it were something holy.

I thought you might want this, to see what’s what so you can keep it going—for your own records—now that I’m done.

The words made no sense until I opened the cover. And even then, I had to study the spreadsheet, pages long, at the front, then flip over the divider, behind which receipts had been taped onto paper and placed in plastic sheet protectors, stacks and stacks of them, filling the binder to bursting—the last ones, resting on top—bills of sale for the cross, the earrings, the shoulder bag, the portfolio.

It’s good to keep track of your expenses.

My father’s voice floated somewhere over my head. The melting butter in me turned cold, hard. It froze me in place, my eyes fixed on the numbers blurring before me. His hand landed on my shoulder, unfreezing me.

Okay, I breathed out. I looked up at him, but he was looking across the lobby.

There’s your mother, he said, stepping away from me. Do we have everything?

I slid the binder into the shoulder bag. My mother gathered the used napkins into a pile and handed me the extra sweater she’d brought down from the room. In case you get chilly, she’d said.

That’s everything then, my father said, looking toward the door. And with that, we walked to the valet, the heavy corner of the binder banging against my hip with each step. I still have it, carried from apartment to apartment, from my first condo to this house, where it sits, tucked in the back of my closet, the weight unchanged.

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