Packing

August 17, 2012

We are finishing a picnic dinner when an ice-cream truck passes, its cartoon jingle splitting the still summer air. It is our last dinner with R. living at home, and without warning, F. and I are teary-eyed, recalling how we’d dreaded that truck’s nightly cruise around our block when R. and E. were young, because no matter how much ice cream we had at home, only the truck’s ice cream would do. The cost of popsicles and Dixie cups added up and yet, we almost always caved in, unable to withstand the longing in our children’s eyes, or to resist their faces lighting up when we gave each a dollar for a frozen treat.

In less than 24 hours R. moves into her dorm, and I have been flashing back all day long: R. playing in her toy kitchen; potty-training in exchange for M&M’s; standing on a kitchen chair, wearing only sandals and stirring pasta; playing first violin in fourth grade; becoming a bat mitzvah; sobbing at the taunts of a middle school bully; jumping off sand dunes in Israel; surfing on Cape Cod; getting her driver’s license and her first paycheck. It’s cliché, rewinding her life in my head, but it’s involuntary: I look at her and the screen splits: The young woman leaving for college shares the frame with the little girl.

Her room at home is pink, dusty and bare. Old photos, a half-finished water bottle, unmatched earrings and a box stuffed with broken eye pencils clutter her nightstand. On top of her suitcase is a pair of high-heeled Mary Jane’s, a jar of hot pink nail polish, a tank top decorated with peace signs, a pair of purple sneakers and a teddy bear. These are the first things that she will dump onto her new bed. They will introduce her:  the emerging woman, the sexy teen, the activist, the grunge monkey, the child. My child.