Holes.

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos. ~Charles M. Schulz

I hate holes. I mean, really hate them.

I like sets. I like ensembles. I like neat-and-tidy, everything-has-a-place. And, see, the thing about everything having its place isn’t just that you’ve got to have the place (which, judging from the organization shows, articles, magazines so prolific in today’s society, is a very common problem)—but also that you’ve got to have the things.

And normally, I do have the things. And the places. I’m pretty fastidious about having places for everything. Each new gift, each purchase—they don’t really feel like they’re mine until I’ve carved a special niche for them. Magazines go in the closet, unless it’s TIME, and then it goes beside Anna’s high chair. Extra buttons go in the old Motrin bottle in the back right corner of my top desk drawer, behind the pens and pencils. Mary Poppins: top bookshelf. Hero and the Crown: middle. Progressions: resting horizontally on the other books on the bottom shelf. There are always three quilts at the food of my bed; Bible and coaster within reach; poetry book and other imminent reading under the bed, which is made. I like the drawers all the way pushed in. The way things in my room stay neat gives me a feeling of peace, a feeling of power. Because I control my room, and if I can make it stay clean, this little square of the world that’s all my own, then I feel that much better about myself. I’m not joking about it being empowering. Plus, I sleep better in a tidy room. Life feels simpler and more manageable when you know that your tchotchkies are in their proper order and that the pictures on your desk are nicely spaced.

The thing I’m having difficulty with is not organizing my college stuff. I’ve enjoyed going shopping; enjoyed stocking and stacking and folding new towels into new Rubbermaid containers. I’m having a hard time, though, taking established citizens of Katherine’s room out of their places and into new territories. It leaves holes. Where my post-it notes are supposed to be in my desk—a hole. The right side of my nightside table—hole. Pictures—hole. Bookshelf—hole, hole, hole. Gaps everywhere. Only one quilt at the foot of my bed. No Mary and Music Bear. I need these things in my dorm room—but it makes me feel sick to think of the holes they’ll leave in my room. Places where something has always been, solid and material and comforting, and where now, something is not. It completely messes up the order of my life.

It reminds me more than I’d like of the ginormous, me-shaped hole I’ll be punching in my family this fall—charmingly manifested by an empty chair at the table between my brothers, a hole-filled room, and a total lack of teenage girl in the family.

I hate big holes.

And I hate little ones, too.