Emma turns 20 and gets an Apartment

August- Sept 2018

My sweet amazing girl got herself an apartment. She signed a lease with her old roommate and set up utilities and set a move-in date between her last day of work and her first day of Junior year at Towson. I am so proud of her. She occasionally asked a question or two as she went through the process but really she did it on her own. She is a competent adult doing responsible things. She makes mistakes and deals with the consequences and keeps meeting her obligations along the way. I remember as a little girl she always wanted a clear answer, a right or wrong, not a maybe or a gray. She has grown up and learned to make space for the nuance, still with a open heart for the marginalized. I miss her.

Emma has been out of the house for the majority of the past 2 years but she has come home on summer and winter breaks. She began to treat her room in the basement more as storage and a utilitarian bedroom than as a her own personal space. She didn't unpack when she came home for the summer this year and instead functioned around boxes and stacks. She was just stopping in. So when she got her apartment with it's full year lease, she told us that Bridget could have her room.

Jim and I had already discussed the room situation and we had decided that we wanted to make sure our college students had a place to live during the in between times of the college years and we had expected to maintain her room. I was a little winded by her readiness to let go of her room in our house. She wouldn't live with me any more,   maybe   never   again.    Deep breath.

We helped her pack her things, and as she did so we put aside a couple of bins of childhood things that she wanted to keep but didn't need in her apartment. I had gotten a few pieces of furniture from my office when it closed, so we loaded those chairs, and tables into the van along with her clothes and kitchen items. Emma also has amassed a number of plants, which we loaded into her new VW Jetta for the trip. The sisters and I, plus Matthew piled in with her stuff and made the trek up to Cockeysville.

Emma's roommate, Mary Ellen, and some of her friends met us up there and we helped to unload and carry her things to the 3rd floor. Johanna enjoyed using the hand cart to roll the boxes closer to the door. Everyone pitched in and we got her stuff in pretty quickly. Megan developed a fever and Rachael was getting together with friends, so I brought the girls home, then Em, Matthew and I made one more trip with boxes and furniture that didn't fit in the first run.

 

I went up a few days later and took Emma grocery shopping. I introduced her to Aldi, which is a discount grocer, where you have to put in a quarter for a cart and you have to bring and bag your own groceries. We stocked her cabinets with staples and loaded her fridge with the basics. It was good to know that she would be fed and that she would know how to afford what she needed going forward.

She came down to visit on Labor Day and we celebrated her birthday as a family. Her actual 20th birthday was on a Thursday of the first week of school but I went up to visit and take her out to eat in the afternoon. I am so proud of the person that she is and I pray for her daily.

Aunt Heather made Emma an Afghan

Happy Birthday Emma!