The Nest Is Never Truly Empty

Now that our daughter and son are grown and living elsewhere, my wife and I are often asked what it’s like to be empty nesters. Even though our children have moved away, the nest doesn’t feel empty to me. When they left, a good bit of their stuff stayed behind.

Our daughter has been married a year now, but her old bedroom remains intact, a shrine to adolescent life in a previous decade. Yearbooks line the shelf, relics always neglected because young people can’t imagine needing a prompt to remember high school. There are dolls stored under the bed and some prom dresses, I think, in the closet.