Clutter
awaits an adult's return
1 I watch her back her new truck out of the driveway. The vehicle is too large, too
expensive. She'd refused to consider a practical car with good gas efficiency and easy to
park, It's because of me, I think. She bought it to show me that she could
2i'm 18, "shed told me so often that my teeth ached. "I am an adult
3 I thoug ht, is that true? Just yesterday you watched some cartoons. What changed
between yesterday and today?
4 Today she's gone, off to be an adult far away from me. I'm glad she's gone It means she
made it, and that 'm finally free of 18 years of responsibilities. And yet I wonder if she
could take good care of herself
s She left a mess. Her bathroom is an embarrassment of damp towels, rusted shaving
blades, hair in the sink, and nearly empty tubes of toothpaste. I bring a box of big
black garbage bags upstairs. Eye shadow, face cream, nail polish -all go into the trash
I dump drawers, sweep shelves clear and clean the sink. When I am fnished. it is as
neat and impersonal as a hotel bathroom
6 In her bedroom I find mismatched socks under her bed and purple pants on the closet
floor. Desk drawers are filled with school papers, filed by year and subject. I catch myself
reading through poems and essays, admiring high scores on tests and reading her
name, printed or typed neatly in the upper right-hand corner of each paper, I pack the
desk contents into a box. Six months, I think. I will give her six months to collect her
belongings, and then I will throw them all away. That is fair, Grown-ups pay for storage
7 I have to pause at the books, Comic books, teen fiction, romantic novels, historical
novels, and textbooks, A lifetime of reading: each book beloved. I want to be practical
to stuff them in paper sacks for the used bookstore. But I love books as much as she
does, so I stack them onto a single bookshelf to deal with later
