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Elizabeth Derby is a 2007 graduate of the College of William and Mary. She is currently enjoying her post-undergrad life while looking for a job. Subscribe to her RSS feed

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The Domestication of Elizabeth Derby

BY ELIZABETH DERBY '07

July 7, 2008

I'm standing in the empty board room, trying to remember my supervisor's extension number, when a senior perfumer walks past the open door. He does a double take, backtracks and sticks his head through the frame.

"Hey," he grins. "I've got a bunch of wrinkled shirts at home. If I'd known you were doing some pressing I'd have brought them in for you."

"Oh, ha ha," I say, gesturing with my iron. "This is for a presentation."

"Right." He winks and ducks back outside.

I roll my eyes and set the iron on the board, careful to avoid burning the reams of filmy blue drape. I pick up the phone and punch through to marketing. "Hi Sarah, it's me. Do you know if the laundry is finished drying yet?"

"Oh, that's right. Sorry, I completely forgot. Do you mind going up to the washroom to check?"

"Sure thing." I set the phone in its cradle and carefully roll up my ironing. I don't want it to get crushed in shipment.

Upstairs, I enter a white-tiled room, filled floor to ceiling with rows of industrial washer-dryer sets. I unlatch the door of a mammoth appliance and note with disappointment that tumbling has stopped but the fine, thin fabric is still damp. Jeez. So much for my clever solution to deeply crushed delicates.

We're pushing for a noon deadline and I can't fight stubborn wrinkles. I feel like I'm trapped in a world obsessed with effective homecare products.

Oh, wait. I AM.

The greatest injustice -- aside from the impossibility of smoothing synthetic fabrics -- is how unprepared I am for this. I mean, here I was, delighting in the renaissance of my suburban childhood, when wham! Suddenly I've gone from making my bed and the odd PB&J to choosing my whole bedroom layout, making full meals, responsible for all pressing household decisions.*

From carpooling my sister to cleaning sink drains; playing with my cats to picking lint off the carpet; waxing lyrical about surface cleaners to actually confronting waxy build-up on unclean surfaces - renting a one-bedroom has become the biggest challenge of my life. Acquiring ice cubes takes three hours. Writing this post takes two months. I feel like a toddler running a marathon as I stand here with my hands open awkwardly, equal parts fear and exhausted bewilderment as I cradle this, the domestication of Elizabeth Derby.

"Whatcha got there?"

I turn around and squint at the bright doorway, clutching my wet blanket to my chest. It's cold and damp. Vinny stands heroically in the limelight, illuminated from behind. "These are drapes," I say, ready to confess. He runs the show up here.

"Oh," Vinny mutters. "So it was you who started that dryer cycle."

I nod, ashamed as a child caught wearing her mother's pumps and gobs of rouge. "These wrinkles are just so stubborn," I whine, horrified by the high, tearful shrill in my voice." Jim needs to FedEx them by noon, and I'll never figure this out. Look, they're still wet." My lower lip trembles, and I'm blinking too much. I look down and hold out the cloth with unsteady hands. Vinny takes it. When I look up, he's smiling.

"You remind me of my daughter," he says. He looks about 30, so I don't ask how old she is. I just try to smile back.

"I used to get confused by these machines, too," he continues. "You just figure it out as you go along." Vinny opens a dryer and sets it to steam. Our eyes meet when he shuts the door. "But in the meantime, let me help. I'll show you what to do."

* Like, you know, which of 250 reality TV channels I should forfeit brain cells for tonight.

Check back for new installments from Elizabeth's journey...

A basement of my very own

BY ELIZABETH DERBY '07

June 12, 2008

Congratulations, Class of 2008! What an illustrious graduation. With this single act you have managed to both flood our desperately thirsty world with talent and intelligence as well as convince your predecessors, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are old. I mean, seriously. You could have given me some warning that a whole year was passing since I finished school. I would have attempted to achieve stuff, or something.

But too late now! Frankly, that's fine with me. I am content to swan around and revel in the glory of long summer days, the seashore glittering with crystal surf and New Yorkers' neck-chains*. It's a beautiful time, really; late-blooming flowers finally wake; tiny butterflies stretch new wings; sunbeams spread warmth and cheer and an abundance of mutated skin cells. I truly appreciate these things, crackling sunburn especially, in part because I work in a windowless office, in part because I live in a basement.

Ha-ha! you laugh. That postgrad jokester, still working as a temp and living in her mother's basement! But wait. Brace yourself. The truth of the matter is ...

It's a basement of my very own.

A single apartment, built in a basement.

A full-sized, fully furnished, totally legitimate apartment of my own. I moved out of my mother's house a month ago.

Oh, you may call it brave. You may call it daring. You may call it hilariously overdue. But this venture into 'adulthood' has nothing to do with maturity. It's a concession to the fact that my Australian boyfriend, suddenly lit from southern skies, will need a place to sleep while he's visiting. I want to show him the best our States have to offer, so a subterranean single it is.

Actually, and I've got to pat myself on the back here, I've chosen a really nice basement. Massive kitchen, two La-Z-Boys, a 50-inch flat screen with 200-plus channels -- this space manifests patriotic gluttony, the American glory of amenities. And I have managed to retain enough personal objects (mostly books, let's be honest, but also a lamp and a picture or two) to make this space feel like a home. Of course it helps that I haven't left suburbia; sometimes rabbits peek in the kitchen windows, and chipmunks dart across the street like neighborhood boys on their way to baseball practice. The house backs up against a long, lovely park, replete with jungle gym and basketball court, and every half hour a train whistles through distant woods.

I miss my family, my room and my cats**. It was hard to say goodbye to a house with 21 years of personal history, a town where the postman knows my name. But the good news is they're only a 20 minute drive away, and I've left so many clothes there that I could not launder for months. That bungalow by the river will never close its doors to me (and even if it did, I can handle a crowbar). In my heart of hearts, I'll never move out. I know now that home is a feeling, a memory, unalterable and so little to do with where I lay my head at night.

It is by far my finest postgrad achievement.

* What can I say? Tri-state area 20 somethings begin migrating south this time of year. Suddenly waxed chests and Muscle Milk biceps are EVERYWHERE.
** Of course I have cats.