As I waved goodbye to the woman who had taken care of my brother, my sister, and I for over a decade for the last time in a long while, I called out jokingly, "But Jean! Who is going to watch us?" My sister Cara, 21, rolled her eyes and chuckled, Nick, 16 did one of his much-practiced "wooooow Sam"s (kids these days) and I, almost 24, stood there waving, wondering if I was really kidding after all. Jean had been coming to clean our house every Wednesday--she had two children of her own, 11 and 3, and hadn't "babysat" us in over 8 years. But something in me that day wanted her to stay and cook us dinner, tell Cara to do her homework (Cara's now finished her associate's and on to medical technician school) and put Nicky to bed (Nick will be a Junior in high school this fall).

I stared at our cluttered foyer as her minivan pulled out of the driveway. All of the stuff I'd decided to take to my new apartment sat waiting to be packed into the car. Posters had graduated to framed pictures, and silly signs and accessories were mostly gone. This was grad school. Even now, sitting in that new apartment, reading over the syllabi for my graduate classes, I wonder if this is how it's supposed to feel. They say the unexamined life is not worth living. But sometimes all this analysis gets exhausting.

It's not that cooking for myself and doing my own laundry is daunting--it's not, hell why do you think my parents let me live home for so long? I did my fair share of chores. It's the expectation that now I would have to produce. No, not reproduce. I mean produce results. Make that 55 thousand dollar loan into something. I know it's not for another year at least but it seems that for every person that loves what they do every day, there are more who despise it. I continue to be determined not to be that person in the longrun. But who can I be in the meantime?

As I neurotically approach the beginning of the end of my academic saga (grad school at BU), I've found myself compulsively wondering how millions upon millions of people have moved out of their parents' houses, relocating to a new home, with new things, and leaving their childhood rooms, essentially their lives, behind. I've asked about 5 people now what they did with "all their stuff" when they left, and was appalled to find that the majority "didn't remember". Maybe I'm just developmentally living in Neverland or something, but as I stare at the drawer of junk (one of MANY) sitting on the floor, awaiting perusal and inevitable downsizing, I can't help but panic when I think about what is to become of all the things that I have meticulously collected and accumulated over my most significant years.


I've gathered no less than 5 bags of garbage, in addition to 4 bags of "give-away" (denim purses, too tight t-shirts, expired makeup, you know, things that I realized I had no use for, despite desperately having held on to them for way too many years) and there is still no end in sight. What about the band photo albums, books, cds, picture frames, favorite childhood stuffed animals (i mean FAVORITE), and my 8th grade journal. You tell me you can look at entries written from a time when you didn't know what unrequited love felt like, and throw them out? Yeah right. Or the letters upon letters from your grandma, who used to laugh and cook for you and teach you rhymes that you'd say to each other, but now calls you her niece. And the pictures of your parents when they were young. Where can it all go? What if it's too much to save?

Or maybe it's just me, wanting to hold onto something that's already gone. Maybe it's not even about the stuff after all.