Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
When my mother told me to pack for our trip to Vermont, I had trouble filling my overnight bag.
Two changes of clothes and underwear, my pajamas, scrunchies for my hair, a hairbrush and toothbrush, and I was done.
But my mother filled a large suitcase, the same vinyl one she’d brought from Indiana years before.
She packed sweaters, skirts, jeans, yoga clothes, pajamas, and slippers.
She also took the mohair throw she liked to wrap around her legs when she watched television on the couch, a framed photograph of herself as a bride, her Espresso Yourself coffee mug, and an inlaid wooden box filled with beaded necklaces and earrings.
We both had to sit on her suitcase to zip it closed.
After I was back home in Buffalo for a month and my mother still hadn’t returned, I thought about that overstuffed suitcase and decided that staying away without me must have been her plan all along.
And maybe it had been. But in time, I saw that she always overpacked, filling that old suitcase even for a mere weekend in Buffalo.
Traveling light, she once told me, is overrated.
I would have packed more for this trip, but I’d been warned against checking a bag.
I shake out my rain jacket and hang it in the closet, along with my two dresses and two blouses.
I toss my sandals and boots in the closet and put the rest of my clothing in the dresser.
I tuck my nightgown under a pillow, plug in my phone charger by the night table, and set my toiletries case on the dresser, which seems like a more considerate place to keep it than in the shared bathroom.
I close my empty suitcase and stash it in a corner.
It’s strange to have so few possessions.
Usually, I’m surrounded by so much stuff .
My own things, my grandmother’s things, things that belonged to my grandfather, who I barely remember, and my father, who I don’t remember at all.
My grandmother’s house—and I still think of it as hers even though it’s been mine for three years—is brimming with paintings and books and tchotchkes of all kinds.
There are baskets of yarn left over from the blankets my grandmother crocheted, old copies of Field & Stream and The New Yorker , fly rods and fishing reels.
There are everyday dishes, my grandmother’s wedding china, and pantry shelves filled with candlesticks, tablecloths, and old Haggadahs.
The linen cabinet in the upstairs hallway holds not only the sheets I got on sale at Target last month but also my father’s baby blanket, pale green with a white ribbon running through it, and the old cotton sleeping bags my grandmother would unzip and use for picnics.
The house is toasty with history and personality, and I love it.
But standing in this spare room, knowing how little the drawers and closet hold, I feel buoyant.
Like I’ve Marie Kondo’d my life, but instead of bringing only items that spark joy, I packed things that have not had a prior life, that have never belonged to anybody but me.
I have the basics that I will need to dress, and bathe, and sleep, and nothing more.
I’ve never felt burdened by my home, but being in a place that holds so little of my past makes me feel like anything is possible.