A small blue suitcase

At fifty six, I discovered that freedom weighs far less than I once imagined.

Everything I Own

This is it.

A small blue suitcase and a black bag.

If you saw them sitting in an airport terminal or rolling down a hotel hallway, you would never imagine that they contain almost everything I own. It seems impossible, really. A lifetime of collecting, of wanting, of imagining what my life would someday look like, distilled down to something I can lift with one hand.

There are no carefully framed photographs. No shelves of beloved books. No boxes filled with keepsakes from places I’ve been. No collections. No treasures tucked away in closets. The keys to old homes and old lives are gone.

And honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There are still things in the apartment in Los Angeles where my daughter and son live. A few pieces that make the place feel pretty. Familiar things. But none of them are things I cling to. Nothing I would rush back into a burning building to save.

What matters fits in here.

Five pairs of underwear. One bra. A handful of interchangeable clothes that somehow create six respectable outfits. A toothbrush. Shampoo. Vitamins. A few painting projects. My computer. My camera.

Three pairs of shoes, which still strikes me as slightly extravagant.

No high heels.

No lipstick.

No foundation, concealer, mascara, or highlighter. My makeup bag has become almost comically simple: toothpaste, a toothbrush, ChapStick with a hint of color, and a small tube of moisturizing sunscreen.

At twenty five, I would have been horrified by this.

Back then, I imagined the mansion. I imagined walls covered with expensive art and closets full of beautiful things. I imagined success measured in acquisitions, in square footage, in possessions that would announce to the world that I had made it.

But somewhere between then and fifty six, I learned that ownership and fulfillment are not the same thing.

My children are safe.

They have food, opportunity, and a roof over their heads.

I have places to visit, people to love, stories still waiting to be written.

What else, really, am I asking of life?

I actually own a larger suitcase. I could have packed more. But standing there, I found myself asking a question that felt strangely radical:

Why?

Why carry more simply because I can?

For so much of my life, I carried too much. Too many expectations, too many fears, too many responsibilities, too many things. How many tank tops does one woman need? How many pairs of pants? How many versions of herself?

Apparently, fewer than I once believed.

And the remarkable thing is that I don’t feel deprived.

I still have my heart.

I still have my soul.

I can still stand barefoot at the edge of the ocean and let the waves cover my feet. I can still stop for sunsets. I can still smell flowers. I can still laugh until I cry. I can still fall in love with a place I’ve never seen before.

None of those experiences require storage units.

None of them need dusting.

None of them have to be insured.

Which is why I find myself increasingly puzzled by our worship of accumulation.

There are people on this planet whose wealth has become so vast that it no longer seems connected to ordinary human life. Hundreds of billions of dollars. Soon, perhaps, trillions.

And I find myself wondering, not with envy, but with genuine curiosity, what does one do with that much?

I’m sure there are answers. Yachts, islands, rockets, foundations, influence, entire industries. There are endless ways to spend unimaginable wealth.

But if this little suitcase and this black bag are enough to give me a life that feels rich, I struggle to comprehend what another billion, or another hundred billion, could possibly add.

Because eventually money stops buying comfort and starts buying distance.

Distance from ordinary worries.

Distance from ordinary joys.

Distance, perhaps, from the simple miracle of being alive.

Meanwhile, here we are, occupying these extraordinary bodies on this astonishing planet, capable of creating paintings and raising children and writing stories and swimming in oceans and watching the sky turn pink at dusk.

And somehow we spend so much of our time hoarding numbers.

We build bigger vaults.

We buy bigger boats.

We erect walls and fences and weapons.

And all the while, the world continues offering its most beautiful things for free.

Sunsets.

Rainstorms.

Birdsong.

The smell of jasmine.

The touch of another hand.

The sound of your children laughing in the next room.

The privilege of growing older.

At fifty six, I know something my younger self could never have understood.

We spend the first half of life believing freedom comes from having more.

And then, if we’re lucky, we discover that freedom was never in the having.

It was in the letting go.

And so this is it.

A small blue suitcase.

A black bag.

Everything I own.

And somehow, standing here with less than I ever imagined, I have never felt so wealthy.

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And if this all sounds wildly glamorous and bohemian, like I’ve intentionally designed some minimalist lifestyle worthy of a coffee table book, I assure you, this wasn’t exactly the plan.

I would love nothing more than a little place to land. A place where I know where the coffee filters are. A place where I could leave a sweater on the chair and trust that it would still be there tomorrow.

But life doesn’t always hand us the cards we imagined.

Fortunately, I have this nasty habit of making lemonade out of lemons. Or maybe it’s lemons out of lemonade. I can never remember which one is supposed to be the good version, but somehow I usually manage to laugh either way.

What’s most important right now is that my kids feel safe.

My son comes home from college every summer, and suddenly the tiny one-bedroom apartment I share with my daughter starts feeling a little too cozy. Three adults. One bathroom. One refrigerator. Approximately twelve dreams all competing for shelf space.

It’s a funny season of life.

They’re at the age when they’re building themselves. Collecting books and kitchen gadgets and tiny pieces of adulthood. Acquiring things. Nesting. Making lives.

Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to remember why I own three pairs of shoes.

So rather than become the strange barefoot woman muttering about consumerism while sleeping on the couch, I disappear for the summer and become everyone’s favorite slightly feral houseguest.

This year I’ll visit my sister, whom I haven’t seen properly in years thanks to Covid and life and all the ways time slips through our fingers. I’ll see old friends. I’ll wander. I’ll collect stories instead of stuff.

Trust me, I’d happily accept a cozy little cottage with a dishwasher and a drawer dedicated entirely to tea. This isn’t some grand philosophy. It’s simply the season I’m in.

And I’ve learned that fighting the season rarely improves it.

So I pack my blue suitcase. I visit people I love. I paint. I tell stories. I drink the occasional espresso martini in the name of literary excellence.

And because this is the strange world we live in, this is the part where I’m supposed to ask you to support my writing, which always feels a little awkward considering, well… everything.

People are worried about groceries and rent and democracy and whether their knees are making that noise because they’re getting older or because they sat cross-legged for too long.

So I know. It’s weird.

But people pay for things they value. Music. Movies. Streaming services they forgot they subscribed to in 2021.

And if this essay resonated with you, if these little stories and existential musings make you laugh or think or feel a little less alone, becoming a paid subscriber for five dollars a month really does help.

And if subscriptions aren’t your thing, a five-dollar Venmo now and then goes a surprisingly long way.

It might pay my phone bill.

It might buy an espresso martini.

Both, I would argue, are essential to the creative process.

I’m living very simply these days while supporting my children as they build lives much bigger than my own. And somehow, in the middle of all of it, I get to write.

Which feels like a miracle.

So thank you for reading.

Thank you for being here.

And thank you for supporting a woman with a blue suitcase, a wandering heart, and an unreasonable belief that stories are still one of the best investments we can make.

Home has never really been a place.

It’s always been my children.

Everything else is just an address.

I would actually consider ending the entire essay with those last three lines. They land quietly, but they stay with you. They feel earned. And they encapsulate everything you’ve said without needing to say any more.