Eldest Daughter is setting up shop in her first apartment. 

After four years of living in a standard-issue dorm room, an apartment is a major upgrade. The complex has been there for a hot minute, but the rent is reasonable, especially considering her unit has been freshly remodeled with new paint and flooring, plus a kitchen redo top to bottom—cabinets, countertops, and appliances. 

She might as well be moving into the Biltmore Estate.

There is no soured, mold-blackened carpet in the bathroom area as there was in her freshman dorm room. Who puts carpet in a bathroom for eighteen-year-old baby adults?

There is no roommate, as in her second year, who yearns to be on Master Chef but doesn’t care to wash the dishes. On each visit, I cleaned out remnants of bread dough, gummed-up rice, and decaying vegetable matter from the drain before filling the sink with hot, soapy water. Then I’d scour dried bits of leftovers from plates, along with glasses that had been scummed with milk which was well on the way to transforming into a noxious French cheese.

But her senior year takes the cake. One of her roommates was given to occasional screaming fits, usually after some disagreement with a boyfriend, after which said roommate would vanish for days on end. Around the holidays, the screaming fits subsided, yet now the roommate was leaving the door to their shared dorm room unlocked and sometimes even partially open. Eldest Daughter has found unexpected guests standing in the hallway looking for the roommate, but they left upon learning their desired contact was unavailable.

So Eldest Daughter is setting up shop in her first apartment.

Hers. Not one on which I’ve co-signed. Not one that I’m going to foot the bill for. And although she’s still looking for that first elusive full-time jackpot job, complete with happily-ever-after benefits and a retirement package, she’s got a nice little gig right now that’s giving her the chance to build her artistic and technical muscles.

She’s a saver. She’s a worker bee. She’s determined and independent.

Would I expect anything less? She’s my daughter, after all, we who have come from a long line of eldest daughters of eldest daughters, duty and responsibility and tact and respect baked into our psyche from birth.

I’ve tried to buy her things for the apartment, but most of what I’ve suggested has already been crossed off her list:

Broom? Check.

Dishwasher pods? Check.

Mop? Yes.

Dustpan? Of course, it came with the broom, Mom.

Hmmm. Let’s get real. 

How about a toilet brush and plunger?

Aha! Something she doesn’t have! Mom for the win. In fact, a plunger in each bathroom is highly recommended for those emergency situations common to all humanity, as well as to avoid leaving earthy specks on the flooring after the inevitable drips when a household is relegated to sharing one single, solitary plunger.

What are some other necessities that I can pass along to make Eldest Daughter’s housekeeping a little easier?

A flyswat. 

A jug of bleach. 

An actual notepad for making grocery lists, because technology will fail you.

Lemon-scented products – from window cleaner to wipes – because lemon lifts the mood, just like the sun rising each day.

Paper towels.

Hand soap.

Tape.

Crazy Glue.

Toilet paper.

A box of salt. A basic set of spices.

Things that we who have been keeping house for a good long while take for granted. 

I’ve got them all packed to deliver to her, because she didn’t have the time to come home this weekend. She was, after all, working.

Yesterday, Sweet Husband and I delivered a bedframe and a mattress, along with a pair of contact lenses that the optometrist was good enough to share with me, while we wait for the regular order to arrive. 

It might be time to find a new optometrist, a new bank, a new doctor, a new license plate with a new county’s number, for she intends to stay in the city where she will walk across the stage, shake the university president’s hand, and receive that piece of paper stating her name and credentials: BFA in graphic design, minor in marketing, magna cum laude.

She has plans for her master’s degree already. But all in due time.

I know she is busy, and it might be a while before she has time to come home. She’s only an hour and a half away, but she’s a full-on adult now. Time doesn’t grow on trees in an adult’s forest. With each day, week, month, and year, time compresses, growing shorter, a necessity that gets squeezed out among so many obligations, oozing like noodles of Play-Doh out of the building blocks of increasing responsibility. Before you know it, you realize that your life really is like the sand in an hourglass you bought at a thrift store, slipping steadily away, and God’s the only one sitting at the desk to see when that last grain will be spent.

So I packed the tailored suits for interviews. I packed her new, sleeveless navy pantsuit, her Easter outfit for this year. It is timeless, a classic for all seasons, and she might need it for a dressy occasion.

And then I noticed something else she had overlooked.

Her Bible.

A necessity.

I asked her, “Do you want me to bring it tomorrow?”

Her response?

“Yes, please!” 

Check. 

Maybe I did raise her right. 

And maybe there have been so many other souls along the way who have influenced her life in ways that I’ll never understand, because it’s her life, not mine, and I’ll not be one of those parents who try to keep their kids so close and so sheltered that I stifle their agency and make them question their abilities.

To those who have helped her: thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

To those who have hurt her, judged her, or ignored her: I forgive you, and in a weird way, I thank you, too. 

We learn as much or more from our bad times as we do from the good.

She’s already learned that holding on to a grudge only weighs a person down. Let it go, and you soar higher.

So sail on, Eldest Daughter. 

Wear your black closed-toe pumps for interviews. Give your white towels a dose of bleach for lasting freshness. 

I already know you’ll keep your door locked.

But please, don’t forget to read your Bible.

It’s a necessity.