I moved everything home from college today and spent most of the day unpacking and organizing, willing my closet to grow or my nostalgia to shrink. It’s strange, how the affection I feel for my room, for this house I’ve lived in since I was six, can almost make me feel like I’ve gone back in time as my present and past selves unite, as my books from the past semester merge into the shelves with Calvin and Hobbes, ancient journals and school papers and projects… Today I rediscovered, for instance, a book of short poems I was required to write in 3rd grade in which I rhymed “umbrella” with “salmonella” probably because of the many lectures I got as a child about the dangers of eating cookie batter with raw egg in it. (Yes my dad is Woody Allen sometimes). Yet In my room, it all coheres; not as one of many worlds I am present in, but a kind of wood between the worlds. Like this poem I love - something along the lines of “There are three of us: the child I was, the girl I am, and the woman I will become.” And here, I am reminded of that view of a life as being like a Russian-doll... all the inner layers I often ignore that remind me who I am and where I came from.
More on travels coming.
Next week, maybe Florida, next month England and Geneva!
