Tokens of Affection

My love language has always been artmaking. When I was 6, I drew pictures for my parents as gifts. Family members, teachers, friends, rabbis, and significant others have all received art made my these two hands.

In the early days of my time with my ex-poet, I found I wanted something of his to wear or carry. Some small token of him I could touch and remind myself of our connection. I wanted him to have something of me, as well. I gave him a scrimshaw token I had made the year before. (Scrimshaw is the practice of scratching marks into a hard surface, often bone, and rubbing pigment into those scratches.)

the scrimshaw token that started it all. This image was taken before the edges were smoothed and polished

It bore an anatomical heart on one side and a porcupine on the other: my prickly heart. At the peak of our romance, he carried my heart in his pocket every day. I quite liked knowing it was with him.

Late last year, remembering that scrimshaw prickly heart, I decided I wanted to create tokens for my partners as Chanukkah / Christmas gifts. I didn’t want to use the faux bone that was the canvas for the prickly heart, because I did not want to have to cut it into shape. I researched my options, and found some vintage game tokens made of bakelite–an early plastic made with formaldehyde that is prized for its durability, vibrant colors, and natural marbling. Two of my partners are big fans of board games, so these game pieces felt perfect. I purchased six of them.

It was important to me that they not be interchangeable, but bespoke for their recipients — reflecting the relationships they represented. Where my ex-poet received an existing token, my current partners were going to receive art made specifically for them. I imagined each carrying in his pocket not my heart, but our connection.

JOVAL

The first and clearest image to envision was the one for my best friend Joval. His name has a Hebrew origin, and I had long ago promised to render it for him and never delivered. He does not have room for more art on the walls, so a token was the ideal way to fulfill my promise without burdening him. On one side of his token, I rendered his name in Hebrew and English, on the other side, my name, transliterated into Hebrew, and in English. We are two sides of the same coin. (I chose not to use my Hebrew name because that is not the name he calls me, nor would I turn around if you called it on the street. Tracie is the name by which I know myself.)

Joval's Hebrew names token: two sides of the same coin

J

J, my newest partner, and I often commiserated about our anxiety. I think of mine as a dog–Annie (short for Anxiety). His is a goose that honks at him when he dares to stop and rest – regardless the reason. For J, I imagined a sleeping goose and a sleeping dog – a hope that we might quiet one another’s anxiety.

J's sleeping anxiety avatars: goose + dog

SETH

Excerpt from a text conversation, Sept 11, 2025:

Me

I love clouds. They make me happy. They’re so much more complicated than we usually think of them. Like. They’re all about negative space. 

And reflection and refraction. I like to think about how I would paint them. 

It’s different in watercolor than in oil or acrylic. Opposites really. Watercolor I’d build the sky and the shadows down around the pristine paper. Oil or acrylic I’d build up to the white highlights. 

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

Why do I have the feeling you are driving?

Seth

I am driving. I’ll stop texting. Stop being so fucking charming.

–

Seth plays guitar. He takes lessons, and is working to get better. But at its heart, Seth's guitar ambitions are not an anxious goal. Rather than a graspy sense of want or need, making music for him is based in joy and love. I attended his first-ever open mic performance, and watched him come alive on the stage with the guitar and a mic. He was lit from within by the joy of what he was doing. For his token, I decided to render what lights each of us – our creative pursuits. On one side the painting of clouds I never render. On the other, his guitar. 

Seth's cloud painting / guitar

GARY

Almost from the beginning of our courtship, I have compared Gary to a golden retriever: he is delighted by my attention and always happy just to be with me. I have told him as much, and he relishes in the metaphor, sometimes conveying his affection with a happy pant or, in one case, a lick to my cheek. 

The child of deaf adults, Gary is fluent in sign language. When we first said “I love you” to one another, it happened because he showed me the ASL sign for “I love you” as he drove away from one of our dates. I recognized the sign, but did not understand its ubiquity in deaf culture – I have since learned it often serves more like “aloha” than as a formal declaration of love. In other words, though he “said” it first, I interpreted greater import than was intended (still, when I said “I love you, too,” his metaphorical tail wagged a million miles an hour). For Gary’s token, the only one with two colors, one side features a golden retriever with a heart in its mouth. The other declares “I love you” in ASL, modeled after my hand “saying” it. 

Gary's Golden Retriever / ASL ily

To develop these, I traced the blanks into my sketchbook, so I knew what size I was working with, and sketched the ideas, sometimes several times, until I got an approximation of the effect I was looking for.

iterations of the clouds "painting"

I then recreated the image on the bakelite by scratching the image into the surface with an etching scribe, followed by India ink smeared on the whole surface and then wiped off with cotton cloth. The ink remained in the scratches, creating the final image.

the tools of scrimshaw

All of these images required three to five passes with the scribe + ink to get the desired darkness and all of the lines I wanted. For some (the clouds, the sleeping dog), I did my best to incorporate some of the swirls of the bakelite into the design. The moment of wiping the excess ink away was magical every single time. If I could create and sell these in a way that was worth it to both me and a potential customer, I would do it in a heartbeat. They were so satisfying to create. I hope and trust each brings a smile to its recipient, whether in his pocket, on a shelf, or in his memory.