Every family has a pack rat. In ours, it’s Emma, my 25-year-old daughter. I’ve bequeathed Winchester, the moth-bitten stuffed panda from my childhood, to her. She’s the only one in the family I trust not to mistake him for trash. An artist, Emma sees the potential in everything. You’d be surprised what you can do with scraps of paper and odd socks.

Emma’s room is like an archaeological dig—prehistoric Legos followed by the era of My Little Ponies, which in turn are overlaid with the Beanie Baby then the Barbie strata. Pat the Bunny coexists peacefully with Harry Potter, and a history of girls’ fashion resides in Emma’s dresser drawers. The artwork papering her walls ranges from pre-K scribbles to sophisticated masterpieces on canvases she stretched and framed herself.

Ever since Emma left for college, I’ve been nagging her to go through her stuff. Sometimes I threaten to toss it all myself if she won’t. But Emma recognizes a hoarder by proxy when she sees one. She knows I’ve kept vigil over her room like a shrine since she’s been gone. I’m not ready to throw away Emma’s Girl Scout swaps—little bits of felt tokens exchanged around years of campfires—anymore than she’s been.

But Emma’s ready now. After a lengthy and sometimes tortured path through college, she’s stopped fighting the inexorable slide into adulthood. At last she’s cleaning out her room with a vengeance in preparation for moving to the opposite coast. Bag after bag of old papers, clothes, the detritus of long-gone years are finding their way into areas designated for Goodwill, recycling, or trash.

I pull things out of the discard pile, nagging replaced by laments.

“Are you sure you want to get rid of this?” I ask, fingering an old sketchbook. What if Emma is the next Picasso?

She’s sure.

“You’re not going to get rid of Winchester, are you?” I say.

Emma smiles. “Don’t worry, Mom.”

But of course I will. Now I’ll have to sort out  my own transition.