I didn’t know where to put the emotions, and so I put them, and those envelopes, away for another time

I

was sure that the house on Prairie Avenue would always be there for me. My parents were safely ensconced in the walls that held the treasure trove of my memories, and it gave me a feeling of solidness I didn’t even know was there. Until they decided it was time to move on and put up their house for sale.

We came to visit and there were piles of boxes on their porch, empty bookshelves. Picture albums and old certificates lined the floor of their garage, and boxes of kitchen items cluttered the surfaces. My children took a few last toys and games from the playroom, and poked in curiosity at the box of home videos and cassette tapes, relics from another era.

Visiting my parents on Sundays started to become hard for me, as I watched the physical contents of my childhood home rounded up and boxed. The big glass table in my parents’ dining room was there one visit and gone the next. The paintings and furniture that I’d grown up with were put up for sale on chats and carted away. I told myself that I was lucky, so lucky, that my parents are still alive and healthy, that they were doing this now and not leaving it to be taken care of by others later.

But it was still hard.