The first time I went to an estate sale, I showed up with a tote bag and a pocket full of small bills. I’m not entirely sure what I expected, but I definitely did not anticipate feeling as though I was trespassing.
It all seemed too intimate—sorting through the bookshelves of strangers, picking out a mug to take home. There was something precious, even sacred, about dog-eared paperbacks and chipped porcelain. Polaroid cameras still holding the proof of someone’s childhood. I wasn’t sure that I had the right to hold them because these objects felt more like stories, rather than just things.
It’s unnerving—staring for too long at photographs of people who will never know you’re looking. You learn the shape of a person’s life through the things they leave behind, signed by the angle at which they cross their t’s and the cardigan threads they fidget loose.
That quiet collision of memories often returns to me, especially now, as I try to make sense of my own relationships, chosen communities, and what it means to belong.
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The word “family” falls into a wildly vast range of definitions. Some students come from lineages of tradition, growing up with framed diplomas hanging in their hallways like art. Others are first-generation college students, clutching treasured acceptance letters like a lifeline. Some have parents who attend every university webinar, and some have parents who had to Google “Brown University” when they first heard the name.
The term found family—most prominently used in queer, adopted, or marginalized communities—describes built relationships that take root in understanding and chosen love, not obligation. At a university where identity is fluid and individuality is celebrated, aspects of found family are woven into the everyday. They’re the classmate who checks up on you when you’re sitting alone, the professor who spots your potential before you do, and the group of friends that feels like a home you never knew you needed.
No two people come from the same place. Despite efforts to blend in, there are always visible seams of upbringing, privileges, burdens, etc. Some of us were raised debating at the dinner table, others in silence. Some had curfews enforced by fear, others had no one waiting up at all. For some, “home” is a comfort. For others, it’s a situation to survive.
Family Weekend may feel like a collision between the old world and the new. Maybe you’re introducing your mother to your partner for the first time, or perhaps you’re avoiding questions about your newly declared concentration. You might even be the lone student on the Main Green with soundproof headphones on, attempting to drown out all the buzz and chatter of lunchtime as everyone heads towards Thayer with their parents.
It can be both a beautiful and a difficult time, but like an estate sale, it’s not about collecting all the pieces. At an estate sale, even the most ordinary objects are imbued with sentiment. A calendar with a three-month anniversary circled. A single glove in a drawer. You don’t need to know the whole story in order to feel something. All you need is a trace.
That’s what found family is—a cluster of odd treasures, a nest of mismatched twigs.
To the families visiting students this weekend: Thank you for trusting us with them. And to the students who feel like they don’t have anyone arriving this weekend: You are not alone. Your family may not be here in person, but maybe they’re the ones who walked you home last Friday night or saved you a slice from Fellini’s.
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The shelf above my desk is adorned with an assortment of strange, little things that only I care about. Pocket-sized notes from people I no longer speak to. A pin from a punk show I went to when I was 17. A doodle drawn on a Post-It, presented to me by a co-worker during a shift at the café I once worked at. An empty tahini jar, now repurposed as a vessel for random screws, nails, and other hardware that I have yet to find a use for.
None of it matches. All of it matters.
In many ways, we inherit each other. Even without knowing someone’s full past, we hold on to pieces of them. A phrase they always say. A song they introduced us to. The way they taught us to be more gentle (or confrontational), or to pour the water before adding the tea bag (or was it the other way around?). We lug our pasts around like objects in a box—belief systems we’re trying to reconnect with, dreams we were once told were too big.
You can build family in the margins, from leftovers, from one interaction to another. We are walking archives of shared meals, inside jokes, fights, and reconciliations. We are cobbled together from our siblings’ habits and strangers’ throwaway comments. And in turn, we leave behind pieces of ourselves for others.
Someone out there is still quoting the story you once told them. Someone is still laughing at a joke you forgot you ever made. Even now, you are someone’s artifact.
So many of us come to universities with the goal of outgrowing versions of ourselves created “back home.” In trying to reinvent ourselves, we discover new identities and routines passed down from each other in the form of group chats and shared Spotify playlists. We cross paths with other people doing the exact same. Over time, these imprints grow their own kind of family tree formed not by blood, but by presence.
We are not a matching set. We are a collection.
