Sandra Morris

I was in high school the day I packed three dollars into an envelope and sent it off to the West Coast. This band, inscribed with the name of a young man who had disappeared while serving in Vietnam, arrived a few weeks later. In 1973, I removed it from my wrist. He had been in captivity for five years.

In the two years I wore his name, I came to think of him as “my POW.” I’d touch the band daily, wondering if he’d be found, if he had family, if he’d enlisted or been drafted.  And while I’ve never believed in magic, or the supernatural, these little actions felt as if I was sending some collective hope off into the universe. Wearing the bracelet, touching it at least once a day­–I wanted something to come of that.

Over the decades, I’ve thought I should look him up, tell him I wore his name, thought of him daily for two years, and often afterwards. But I couldn’t imagine that call or letter, landing in the middle of his life and how it might disrupt the equilibrium I hoped for—that he’d returned to people who loved him, and it was enough.

This past Christmas, I was drawn to a vendor in Central Park selling aluminum bracelets made by Laotian women from bombs dropped on Laos by the U.S. I wear one regularly inscribed with these words: “Give yourself some latitude.”