On the way to the United States, I visited Romania with my parents in Summer 2014. Romania was unexpectedly cold, and so I found myself in need of socks. This pair of socks, stripy purple and weirdly hitting just above the ankle, was one of those socks that I took from my Mum and obviously didn't return. Every time I see it, I am reminded of the fact that it's an article of clothing that belonged to my Mum (though of course I doubt she noticed it went missing), which makes it feel particularly significant to me. It makes me think of how I was and how I felt when I first acquired these socks (shucks, this really makes me think of Dobby), when I was about to start a new life in a new country and simultaneously afraid and excited by the things that lay ahead.
Today as I did my laundry and started to begin packing up my apartment, I couldn't help think that this would be one of the last times I would do such a thing in this place. For example, these socks: I don't think I'll be wearing these socks now as the weather gets warmer, which means I probably won't be washing them in this same laundromat when I do my laundry for one last time in a few weeks. Whenever and wherever I wash my socks next, it will be me in another yet-unknown place and in a different stage of my life. This is because I'll soon be moving out of my lovely place with Marina on Broadway Terrace, and moving into a place in Gramercy with Jonathan.
At the same time, my life as a Masters student will officially end next week with graduation, and a new phase of my life will begin. A physical uprooting mirroring an internal change in status. So now when I walk around my usual haunts of Washington Heights/Inwood, Norwood, Upper West Side and Morningside Heights, I cannot help but think that this could very well be the last time in my life that I would ever walk on a particular street. Mundane things have now become imbued with an odd and sentimental significance. But such is life and the human condition, that we arbitrarily romanticise the world around us as we attempt to make senses of things.
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