You were working in GE’s aerospace division, a computer analyst on loan to NASA, when my birthday rolled around. You didn’t normally pick out my presents, but that year, my thirteenth or fourteenth, you did.

Your brown eyes shone with excitement as you handed me a jewelry set, not in a fancy box from a store, but in small individual Ziploc bags. A metal bangle and matching pendant earrings, swirled in an ethereal rainbow. The aquamarine, emerald, and indigo bands ran into one another as if they were dancing on the metal; the bangle so hard it would bruise my wrist bone if I didn’t put it on carefully.

Always primed to deliver a lecture, your teacher’s soul suppressed by the need to earn a bigger paycheck, you were animated as you explained how you bought them from your co-worker at NASA. How it was the same titanium used in the Space Shuttle. How the titanium got its rainbow color from being anodized, by passing a high-voltage electric current through the metal soaking in electrolytes, producing a range of colors as the light bent at different angles.

Did you give them to me, Dad, because they were pretty? Or because you thought I was titanium, too? 

Did you think the shock of electric current of my brother’s hands when he groped my skin changed my own colors, just like the bracelet? Did the new colors drip from my soul like the earrings dangled? Were you telling me I was changed, but still solid, still here, maybe even more beautiful because of my high-voltage childhood? Or was I just a science experiment?

I was strong, sure, just like titanium. You didn’t know where I came from, but you joked I had an astronaut’s blood pressure, staying cool in a crisis, modulating my body’s stress response. Did you ever ask yourself why that was, why your kid was so used to facing stress that she drifted out of her body, her mind sent on a spacewalk to protect itself?

Titanium is used in aerospace because of its high strength-to-weight ratio. That reminded you of me, too, right? I was small for my age, but I could take a lot. You knew that. Before I stopped complaining to you about my aching ribs or sprained wrist, before the abuse took on an even darker flavor, you told me, He’s not that much bigger than you. Fight back! Making clear to me you would not fight my battles, even when you should have.

Maybe you knew I would like the jewelry because titanium and I are both able to resist corrosion, no matter what gets thrown at us. Or maybe it’s our ability to withstand cold temperatures, like when you stopped calling me by my name and instead started calling me “the girl child” when I caused too much trouble.

Maybe with a kinder lens, I can think you gave me that jewelry because you wanted to inspire me to become titanium. I was still young then, riddled with doubt. We couldn’t talk about what was really happening so maybe this was your way of urging me to persist, to be tough enough to maintain whatever my original properties were before this engineered family refracted my essence.

Your heart stopped beating long ago, your pulsing light absorbed back into the galaxy. But the jewelry, like me, has lasted. Even though I haven’t worn it since high school, it sits inside my jewelry box, still protected in the original Ziplocs, still pretty. A reminder to be strong when I’m immersed in new challenges. 

Titanium was a good gift, Dad. But a better gift would have been a home where I didn’t need the strength of titanium to survive.