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a home + living guide for the post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation

12.17.2001

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big decorating dreams. tiny little budget. don't be a wallflower! jump on over to the discussion boards and get decorating help.
 
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other recent LOUNGE articles:
o Sew What?
o Curtain Time
o
Lazy Decorator's Bag of Tricks
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Home sweet homes
o
Minor Makeover Miracles: Kitchen
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CD decor
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Home/work
o Say it with Spraypaint
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Painting 101
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Make it Mosaic!
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Estate Sales 
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Open House 
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Hammock Heaven 
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Makeshift Vases 
o Newlyweds' Nest 
o Variations on a Theme 

copyright ©1999-2001
DigsMagazine.com.

after 
s
chool  
by Emily J. Wolf |
1 2

One of my favorite childhood books was Donald Hall's The Ox-Cart Man. I flipped through the pages of simple and elegant drawings of an early American family long before I learned to read; by the time I could read it myself, the binding was broken and pages had begun to come detached from the hardcover spine. In the story, a New England farmer goes to Portsmouth to sell his goods — wool, leather, vegetables, candles — as well as the cart and ox that brought him to market. Saying good-bye to the ox, he kisses it on the nose and heads for home. As a child, I loved this story because of the themes of the eternal cycle of seasons — the sense that a kind of newness and rebirth comes with every season, every change. As an adult, getting ready to move from the small city where I attended university to one of the biggest of big cities, New York, I turn to The Ox-Cart Man again because it reminds me that what I'm doing — this packing and shedding of worldly goods — is as natural as the seasons, and that change will renew me, despite all that I'm casting off in the process.

I have moved exactly eleven times in the past six years. I have moved from dorm room to dorm room (sometimes each semester), and from one apartment to another. I've mastered the twin arts of packing and unpacking, and I can fill out an address change form faster than you would think possible. I've had many addresses, and many more phone numbers. I've become comfortable with these small, in-town moves. They've taught me to imagine myself as a turtle, carrying my shelter on my back; they've taught me to rethink "home" not so much as a physical place, but rather as a mental state. This understanding is what makes this next move so significant: for not only am I changing cities, I am also changing my mental understanding of home. "Home" will no longer be measured in semesters, nor will it include classes, professors, or paper writing — the known variables that make up the transient life of a student. Instead, my notion of home will depend on new and unknown quantities. 

For nearly six years now, I've been here in upstate New York, first as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student. When I first arrived in Binghamton (in a loaded-down, sagging station wagon crammed with every comfort, every book I could possibly imagine ever needing in that new dorm-home), I hated this city. I suffered through my first semester, while I filled out transfer applications for schools in nicer, less rainy places. But I stuck through that first year, and made friends who, in turn, made this tired, upstate city easier to manage. 

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