Although I was hoping for it to happen all week, it sort of happened organically.
“Ow!” I heard Evaline say through the wall, which made me stop typing.
She came into my office.
“I stepped on a tack. Do you still have that cup of thumbtacks?”
I pointed to my closet.
“I need scissors,” she said.
“Not the lefties,” I said. And that’s what prompted me to get up.
“Here,” I said.
“Which shoes do you think I should bring?” she asked.
And, since I don’t have her shoes memorized, that’s how it started. That’s what brought us into her room. Together.
There were piles of stuff on the floor and the bed, a chaotic organization; Post-it notes (yellow, pink, and blue ones) affixed to her belongings signifying some sort of hierarchy. The shoes were in neat little rows in front of her cosplay shelf.
“Man, you got some good shoes,” I said.
“I know, right?”
We managed to cut out some of the least-worn pairs, but that left quite a few in the “definitely taking” pile, including the C-3PO flats and the 8-inch platform boots she wore as Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas. All told, she had 6 pairs of shoes, not including her go-to Vans, Docs, and Berks downstairs.
“Do you see my problem?”
And then I did what parents do, what big people do for little people without even thinking about it, what comes naturally when you see a child in need: I problem-solved.
“We’ll get you a shoe rack, I said. “If you go vertically, your shoes won’t be all over the place. you’ll have more floor space, and your roommate won’t want to kill you. We can pick it up in we’ll get it New Haven, so you don’t have to pack it.”
(I’m almost certain my mom said this to me at one point in my life.)
“You don’t think it’s weird to bring so many shoes?”
“Some people have a lot of shoes.”
By this time, I was curled up on her bed, leaning on my elbow, taking in all the pictures, artwork, costumes, pieces of stagecraft, signed circus posters, medals, internship lanyards, and hand-scrawled signs that chronicled her years of life. Many of the artifacts were projects I had a hand in, but there were plenty of things she did all by herself. Anyone who ever touched this girl was in here.
“I’m proud of you,” I said, knowing it was a lame thing to say.
“Yeah.” And she paused a second to look around. “I took one of the hot glue guns.”
“Good,” I said. “You should.”
“Do we have masking tape?”
“In my tool bag. I’ll grab it for you.”
She already had 3 large IKEA bags piled high in the hall by the stairs, a box of postcards and drawings from friends, a hat box with 3 juggling hats, and a massive foam-core screen-printed poster that says “Stand Out,” which she planned to cut into quarters to fit it into one of those bags.
Moving Bags are sad, but it’d be worse if they weren’t there.
Kids are meant to outgrow their home, just like they outgrow their clothes.
And, though I have a tightness in my chest, which has been there for 2 weeks now, I love those bags and everything in them, and that row of ridiculous shoes, and that beautiful fucking sign which is going to be so hard to take on the plane.
And I love that girl. With my whole heart, not just a piece of it.
Which is why it hurts so much to let her go.