The Emptiness of Moving

Not long ago this held a bed and a table. There was a lamp and a wastebasket and little piles of books and bus schedules and take out menus. A set of spare house keys was always on the dresser and in the closet there is a secret portal to the attic, now sealed and painted and ... inaccessible. It was purple a few days ago and still held staples along the top edge from the year my daughter wanted Christmas lights in her room.

As each room becomes emptied and stripped of all the things that made it "ours" - a little bit of me feels empty, too. I brought my daughter home from the hospital and put her in a crib in this room - oddly enough it was almost the same color blue then as it is now. Nearly twenty years later.

Selling the house where your children grew up is hard.