Had a conversation with a friend tonight about preparing for house sitters, particularly student house sitters. I've been thinking about putting some things away, in nondescript cardboard boxes, in the back of the closet, in the basement; things such as old journals, or embarrassing fetishes in my music collection, or the little wooden box where I store my birth certificate and expired credit cards, or the contents of my underwear drawer: my mother's pearls, a few old letters, an envelope filled with lavender, my dainties. Do I want her to see my socks? My crumbs beneath the sofa cushions? I've thought of leaving my old laptop available for her, but I'd have to clean up my bookmarks and documents, wouldn't I? My stored passwords, my poor unfinished poems. My friend tells me she has a trunk with a lock on it. I don't have a trunk with a lock on it.
What have I missed? Maybe the tarot cards ought to go away too. And the unused lotion collection already at the back of the closet. What does that say?
And then my friend said that what we hide from our house sitters would make a great essay.
The Things They Hid.
(--Add self-help books to that list, I think...)
