A Memory Lasts Forever...

“I give you this to take with you:

Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can

begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” 

― Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters

My daughter Sara came home from college last Thursday to pack up all of her personal belongings.  She went back to school yesterday and I found myself exhausted: physically and emotionally!

We spent Friday packing up her room.  On Saturday, we tackled the basement and Sunday morning was final clean up.  Total results:

     Three car loads to the local Goodwill

     Three large green garbage bags in the dumpster

     Fourteen boxes, one bookcase, one nightstand and 6 large framed photos transported to her dad’s house for storage

     5 boxes and an air conditioner set aside for pick-up Easter weekend

     Plastic tub full of clothes, floor fan and three bags of stuff jammed into her car to use this spring

Her bedroom is now empty of all but her furniture set which I will try and sell. I look around and see almost fourteen years of memories passing thru my mind. 

She was 6 when we moved in here, just a little girl, trying to cope with her parents’ divorce. I hear the little girl giggles and remember her tip-toeing into my room when she had a nightmare. I see the 10 year old insisting she didn’t need to go to after school care anymore; arguing with me that she was a big girl and could stay home by herself. 

I remember the young lady in middle school who loved spinning flags and rifles in Winter Guard and traveling around the state to compete. She was passionate about helping others and being “fair” and walked away from friendships rather than be part of a “mean girls” crowd.

High school brought dances and make-up and cell phones and lap tops. Mission trips to Mexico, summer camp and boyfriends. Girl talk was with her friends instead of me. Boundaries were pushed, doors were slammed and tears were shed.  But we always came back to one another with a hug and a kiss good night, sweet dreams, I love you too.

We both grew up in this room and in this house. We are not the same people we were in August 2000.

She is a confidant young woman who shares a house with her sorority sisters, travels across country for conventions and worries about what she will do after she graduates next year.

I have learned to solo travel and have met distant cousins in Alabama, Tennessee, Scotland and Ireland. I am moving by myself from a small town in CT to Charlotte, NC and beginning a new chapter in my life.

We don’t need each other the way we used to. We have formed a new relationship and encourage each other to grow and experience new things in our lives. We will always be mother and daughter, just not in the same house.

But still, the memories linger…