Kitchen demolition is slated for next week, and my job is both simple and formidable: empty the hub of the house of everything in it, down to the last pieces of stray dog kibble in the pantry’s far corner. (Some mouse’s stash, no doubt. Bummer when he comes for it.) Knowing how good Rae will be as a helper and how excellent a conversationalist–she’s CdeP 2011, and we had two trimesters of English IV Honors together–I’ve hired her for the day.

We’re a good team, efficient and speedy. The worst of it–the pantry, shelf upon shelf of entertaining stuff –is bare within two hours. Rae seems to know instinctively what I’ll want to keep and what to repurpose, recycle, or flat-out pitch into the dumpster, so I turn her loose on the cupboards as I work through the drawers.

By 3, all that’s left is the junk drawer: batteries of all voltages, abandoned but potentially useful glasses cases, tangled chargers-and-cords, a one-armed pair of readers, three mismatched walkie-talkies, and the kind of miscellany that gathers in dark places like this during a couple of decades in a home. This I can handle, so I send Rae off with thanks and a recommendation for some summer reading. I start to sort the mess, but then realize I can just take the whole drawer out, stack it on one of the piles in the dining room or living room, and worry about it when I’m back from break. Done.

I stand, alone now, in a barren kitchen that has seen hundreds of Open Houses, has thrown its arms around generations of Thacher Toads, has done more than its share in hosting the old, the young, and every age between, faculty and staff, alums, friends, family. It’s in for more than just a facelift. In eight weeks, the drawers will actually slide in and out without having to been yanked and torqued, cabinet doors will yield with functional grace, and–most important–the layout will allow for flow rather than bottleneck. (A part of me knows that teenagers actually enjoy the bottlenecking, but that’s another blog.)

I’m imagining the ease and beauty of the new digs at the first big event of the school year when I look over to see the oversized bulletin board near where the phone was. Layer on layer of tacked up and stapled-in photos, dozens, maybe hundreds, but, for sure,  twenty years’ worth. And the dang thing is nailed and cemented to the wall: no simple removal a la the junk drawer. I have a logical, even intelligent thought: I’ll pitch the pix and start fresh in the fall on a new corkboard. After all, the more important photos are in albums, I reason. So I begin, pulling down the surface stratum of smiling faces: Jonathan and Tara on their wedding day a year ago, Libby and Matt a few months prior, and Nini and Sudeep on theirs this spring–four of the six are former students, and one pair married in the Outdoor Chapel on campus.My mum tucked into a hug with her last living brother; Imani and Jabari in each other’s toddler arms, these two cherubs the offspring of Nikki and Eric, Toad classmates of 2001.

I can’t throw them out, at least not right now. Thus begins a “Keep” pile.

Next layer down, my sister and Cam at the Extreme Cowboy Championships. Dottie and Dick (my first boss at Thacher, 1978). Nathalie, from Governor’s Academy days, and her ‘tween daughter. Criss (an advisee from my first stint at Thacher) and David, Conrad (just graduated) and Margaret (about to be a sophomore) before either child was in double-digits. Phyllis and David, Geoff and Mike–supreme colleagues/mentors, both couples–with their expanding clans, more CdePs represented; and another collegial hero to me: Bonnie, a photo from her memorial service. Liz and Bert, Theana and Aaron, as brides and grooms. Our nearly-nephew Robert, now a sophomore, and his brother Rich hiking in Grand Teton National Park.

There are also photos taken inside this kitchen: Tim CdeP 2010 standing at the open freezer door with a snowball, hoping for a holiday declaration when he presents it to Mully; Meredith, Lucy, Katherine (then Annie), Robin, Alina–an advisee group from 2007–dramatically whipping up pizzas. A crowd too packed to list names, each toasting the camera or each other with a popsicle.

Iterations of the Farese family. Of the Carney clan, from the present five to four to three as I peel off trimmed holiday cards. Of the Hoopers, of the Perkinses (Alec, of my first admission class upon returning to Thacher in 1986, Serena, and their little ones). Jenny CdeP 1998 and her first child, Madeline, at six months old, tipped upside down, mouth agape in laughter, hair all afuzz. A gaggle of pint-sized ruffians perched on Jameson Boulder at some Big Gymkhana at least ten years back: facbrats Madeleine, Zane, Grady, and two kids who’d also become Thacher students–Monique and Alex. Who knew?

And the deepest in, amid many others, our daughter Annie, riding some springy contraption in Ojai’s Libbey Park, a tow-headed Liam  in front of her on the seat, their small hands overlapping on the handlebars. (She starts law school in August; he just stood on the Commencement dais to receive his Thacher diploma–off to Occidental come fall. In the future, they’ll be on the same reunion cycle–3’s and  8’s, bound forever by their common bond that, for both, began at birth.)

It’s a time-travel exercise I hadn’t seen coming when we started this morning, a beam-me-back that, one tangible image after another, reminds me of how completely the personal and the professional are merged in my life. And I come out of the undoing and the reverie neither elated nor exhausted–how I thought I’d feel once the kitchen job was finished. Just. . . I don’t know. . .  full.

The photos, now in a shoebox balancing on the junk drawer balancing on a mountain of tupperware, are only a small part of it.