The Box Marked Kitchen, Misc.

It's the fourth weekend I've driven up to pack my mom's kitchen into boxes, and it's almost midnight and I'm taping the last one shut. I wrote KITCHEN MISC on the side in marker, for the mugs. Not the good ones from the hutch, the ones she actually used, the chipped blue one, the one shaped like a rooster my dad won at a fair before I was born.

She keeps thanking me. She keeps saying sorry for being such a bother, sorry I have to keep driving up, sorry the closing got pushed to the fifteenth instead of the eighth.

I told her a week doesn't matter. I told her I don't mind.

Then tonight, taping this box, I caught myself doing math. Counting how many more Saturdays before the house is empty and I get my weekends back, and for about four seconds I wanted the closing date to move up, not back, and I wanted it more than I wanted to be someone who never thought that.

I put the tape gun down. I didn't say any of it out loud, not to her, not to the empty kitchen, not to the box.

I'll drive up again next Saturday. I'll tell her a week doesn't matter. Some part of me will already be counting the weekend after that.