There are so many cardboard boxes, and of course, the crates full of the most useless junk are the only ones that can come close to capturing the things worth remembering here at 5018 S. Woodlawn. The birthday noisemakers, plastic Easter eggs, leftover glow sticks, and that empty bottle of wine that was also an excellent rolling pin testify to the days we have spent so well. I'm not sure whether we did a good job with recording all those adventures, especially on this blog. That's the real tragedy of this past week: there seem to be fewer signs that things ever really happened.
But cleaning was never the beginning of the end. Like most endings, this one started before plans for moving out or even our official final day arrived. (In fact, I'm writing this with one more night of our lease to go.) But if you really wanted an answer, I'd say the last day of the Vineyard was yesterday evening. It was only about 10:30, but most of us had already changed out of our clothes into pajamas. Our parents had left, replaced with the friends we hugged congratulations only a few hours earlier. We left the door open. When we heard footsteps climbing up the stairs, we guessed who would emerge, slightly out of breath from the three flights. Someone brought beer that most of us were too tired to drink, but no one could say no eating a leftover carton of Ben and Jerry's with plastic forks. Those of us too slow to claim a structurally unsound kitchen chair sprawled on the radiator, snagged a spot at the coffee table, or simply sat on the floor (a brave feat, given all the dirt and grime we swept up today). Although it was just yesterday, I don't really remember what we talked about, but I do remember thinking if we had all the time in the world, you could always find us here: making pancakes at noon while rehashed the things we did the night before; waking up our disgruntled neighbors who are convinced that the one party we throw each quarter is excessive; sitting in silence, eyes trained on laptop screens, hoping our papers could just write themselves; working through all those hiccups of our daily lives. We were so so so tired, but even though it was becoming harder to speak proper English sentences, we stayed up as long as we could.
I don't have a picture of our last night, but I do have this photo of our famous island counter. As per usual, it's littered with stuff. Beka's graduation flowers will sit happily in their mason jars for a few hours more. The box on the top right hand corner will go to Goodwill, its neighbors will be divvied between Kathleen and Marcus's apartments. The plastic bags will be recycled. The cleaning supplies will be the part of the new tenant's inheritance. The door sign, where our names are hand-painted in a glittery gold will hopefully find a safe home. Tomorrow, someone else's stuff will fill that space, but the kitchen will always look prettiest in the afternoon, when the sun, facing west, streams into the room. The chairs will always be on the brink of collapsing. We will always sit on them anyway.
