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Packing my memories August 29, 2002, 12:13 p.m. Half-filled boxes of this and that have turned the dining room into a labyrinth, and the clothes that seemed to multiply on my chair, floor, foot of the bed all summer long now vanish into black hole dufflebags. I slept poorly last night, and not for very long, knowing it was my last night here in I-don't-know-quite-how-long, but not knowing how I felt about that. I outgrew the bed several years ago, and have to tuck my toes beneath the footboard if I want to stretch out. It took me weeks to adjust when I first came home, having grown used to extra-long Swarthmore beds. Yet when Dad asked me a week or so ago if I'd like to replace it, I answered no without hardly having to think about it. I've slept in this bed for fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years, and now that I'm gone I don't want my past to change behind me. I find myself unable to comprehend that I'm really leaving, and I don't know what I ought to think or feel. I have an urge to pull things together, to gather the threads of memories I've collected this summer and knit them into something complete - something I can hold up to the light and understand, so I can know what this summer meant and why. My fingers fumble, though, and I seem to drop stitches and tangle the strands, and I'm left without a clear sense of finality... sea birds dipping their wings in the water in the sun of an arctic midnight and the vibrant stillness of used bookstores and sweat dripping down my breast in a Finnish sauna... river water pounding around me and the burning ache that rises in my biceps as I beat a cake batter by hand and dew forming on my dress as I huddle closer in my shawl and read by ever-dimming light... talking barefoot in noisy coffeeshops and dressing up for one elegant dinner and watching Marilyn Monroe movies all alone with buttery air-popped popcorn... the moments spill through my hands - to mix metaphors - like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to which I've lost the box lid. I feel like if I just had enough time I could put it together, but I don't know what it should look like or where to begin. I begin by ending, then, and wander the house searching for anything I may have overlooked: a book, a pair of socks, a bar of vanilla-almond soap. Perhaps by bringing these items together I can tell myself that my life, too, is manageable... or perhaps in the chaos I may take comfort that it cannot be contained nor defined so easily.
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