a white hollow-core elephant

When I graduated from college, David, his family, and my family flew out to Tucson to help me move. Everyone helped with the packing, then my parents headed on a plane to San Francisco and Dave's parents and sisters drove back to San Diego while David and I planned our nimble heist. We were abducting my 7-foot-long, 3-foot-wide wooden thesis model out of the College of Architecture gallery and into our rented U-Haul in the middle of the night, even though it was scheduled to remain on display for the next few months (for the upcoming accreditation visit, or something important like that, because I had promised a few people I'd donate it to the school). But I'd obviously changed my mind, because I remember walking into the gallery that night and thinking that it was going to be a cold day in hell if I ever let this beast out of my sight. This was the sole object of my attention during my senior year. I worked on it devotedly and lovingly, obsessively and fanatically, sometimes with discipline and sometimes with reckless impulse, but always with fierce loyalty.

I am a bit of a nut, no? To be so deeply attached to a hollow-core door.

Nonetheless, we packed it carefully into our truck and hauled it safely to San Diego, and soon after I was reprimanded by the college for my act of theft. While I was away in San Francisco that week with my parents, David somehow single-handedly managed to mount it on our wall, 11 feet off the ground. I don't like thinking or talking about this feat that he is so ridiculously proud of, because I can guarantee you he was (more than once) thisclose to dropping it or breaking off a limb (the model's, not his) because he was probably performing this feat on one leg while peeling a banana and trying to dip it in a jar of Laura Scudder's chunky peanut butter. That's just how bizarre the boy is when no one is watching.

Anyhow, this grand pièce de résistance has been proudly hanging on our loft wall for 4 years now, a symbol of my priorities as an architect and an impassioned distillation of how I view the built environment. And sometimes it just looks so sexy, casting leggy afternoon shadows on our wall.

I came home early yesterday with a debilitating headache and laid down on our couch. We are moving soon (to Michigan, for grad school) and have been discussing the details of this 2400-mile maneuver. The simple fact is that we will need to part with much of what we own, and I know David hasn't dared to mention my thesis model because he doesn't want to upset me by suggesting that it shouldn't make the move. Well, Dave, I haven't mentioned this white hollow-core elephant either, because up until yesterday afternoon, I was convinced we were going to take it with us.

But I think you and I both know that we are evolving into something else now, because as I stare at it hanging so impressively above our lovely space, I feel it has served its purpose.