The Little Things

When I was about 19, my little brother (age 6) asked me if I was a grown-up. I didn't know. I wasn't a kid, surely. I'd been in college for two years at that point. I was on my way to do a year abroad. But on the other hand, I had no mortgage, no car, no children, no responsibilities to anyone but myself. I struggled to figure out how to answer his next question, which was a more general one about how you know you're a grown-up.

But now, I have answers.

You know you're a grown up when you choose to have cereal for dinner and no one says anything.

You know you're a grown up when you spend the first night sleeping alone in your very own apartment.

You know you're a grown up at the moment it registers that you now have another tiny breathing human life dependent on your actions.

You know you're a grown up when you look around your house and realize that you do not only own clothes and shoes; you have a bed for a guest room and summer and winter versions of diaper bags.

And you have the little things. The random bits, slowly accumulated, that make life richer even though they are not strictly necessary. Things like:

* sushi rolling mats, so that you can have people over for make-your-own-sushi dinners

* the original game of Battleship

* an espressso/capuccino maker

* wall-hangings/carvings/ceramics from the trips you took before you had children (to Hawaii, New Zealand, the Yucatan, South Africa, Pompeii, Greece), plus one acquired since you had children (on a trip to Saugatuck, MI -- approximately 175 miles from home)

* that awesome gizmo that slices and cores apples in one fell swoop

* four perfect Thonet chairs, trash picked on Moving Day in a college town (when all the leases expire on August 14, and the new ones don't start till August 15, and 20,000 students are trying to figure out how to situate themselves in the interim, and are therefore just abandoning unneeded furniture by the side of the road)

* a giant cherry wood salad bowl, made in Vermont, with matching salad tongs

* your grandmother's silver pocket watch that doesn't run, but it doesn't matter because it looks so pretty hanging on that silver chain around your neck

* a fondu pot

* a beautiful set of cheese knives

What are the little things you love? The things you would certainly pack if you moved, even though it means a few extra boxes? The things you don't use every day but that you love to be able to pull out when the time is right. The things that mark you as having made a home.