The last time we cleaned out our older daughter’s closet, Meghan Markle had just married Prince Harry, Fortnite was everywhere, and I still had hope. Hope that she might one day become a neat-freak. She was old enough to take on the responsibility of cleaning her room independently, so I did the thing that parents are supposed to do and backed off so she could. Since then, the closet has become her “cram everything in it that I don’t know what to do with when I clean the rest of my room” storage space. As a result, she hasn’t been able to close the door in well over eight months. 

The closet situation, along with several other domestic crimes like leaving wet towels on the floor and somehow losing eight to ten forks under her bed, is the source of my gray hair and a troubling number of daily expletives leaving my mouth.

My now-legally-an-adult-child leaves for college in just over a week, so this morning, I decided it was time to excavate her closet. I went into this project with the mindset of someone preparing for battle. I had laundry baskets, trash bags, boxes, totes, cleaning supplies, and, for reasons I still cannot adequately explain, a 9-iron. Arms overflowing, I stormed into her room like I was invading another country.

“MOM! I’m sleeping! WHAT are you doing?!”

“Actually, it’s noon so we’re done sleeping. Now, here, take this.” I handed her a laundry basket. “You’re on dirty clothes. I’ll start with shoes.”

“ARGH. You’re doing the most right now.”

“I know! And you’re doing the least! UP! This closet isn’t going to clean itself!”

Anyone who has ever woken someone from a dead sleep to try to make them do a household task can predict how well my approach landed. 

But somewhere between the twenty-seven pairs of shoes she’d outgrown and the stack of sketchbooks filled with drawings by a much younger version of herself, she got with the program. 

The whole thing stopped feeling like a battleground and more like an archaeological dig of her childhood. 

There were the bead sets she had used years ago to make bracelets, thirteen Squishmallows of various shapes and sizes, photographs of her with her friends at various ages, a million broken crayons, homecoming dresses, and well, if I’m being honest, more goddamn forks.

I had dreaded this task for a very long time. The closer we got to the day she would pack up her things and move to college, the harder it was to think about all of the memories I would find buried in that mess of a closet. But when I couldn’t put it off anymore, it really wasn’t so bad. The closet was clean and organized in record time. There were no tears (at least not until now as I write this) and no threats of world domination. There were smiles, though, laughter, and several rounds of “Remember this…?” 

There was a not-so-little girl and her mom, wading through a mess made by eighteen years of living and learning, worrying and yelling, crying and maybe a little more yelling. But mostly, eighteen years of love.