I came down to one of parent's houses last night for a weekend visit (thus the Saturday posting!). It is strange because they told me that they had already begun moving from the house in Sharpsburg to the house in PTC by taking "a few boxes each day." Mom said "We are just taking the things you can't see." I walked into the house to find that her perception of what you can't see and my perception must be completely different. There is almost nothing left. There are no pictures on the walls. There is no clutter on the shelves. Today there is not even an end table in the den! There are all kinds of things missing because they made it in a couple of boxes each day. The Sharpsburg house is the first house they have lived in without me. I will never forget the day they moved here because it was my 22nd birthday. I had just graduated from college and was living with them, I think. There was a sense of misery when they left that house. It was a completed sense that my childhood was gone. I didn't really no what to do so I did the only thing I could do: get drunk. I don't know if I got drunk that night or later on, but my memory is so foggy, there was definitely alcohol involved. Today, my father has already left with a car load full of things to go to the "dream house." It is a beautiful home and has things they want, like a music room and no yard (and what yard there is, Dad doesn't have to care for very much!) and a master on the main with a kitchen that has an island. I just noticed that the room that I stay in when I come down to the Sharpsburg house has more accoutrements in it than the whole rest of the house just due to what I packed! ( I like making myself feel at home when I go places so I pack stuff not just clothes.) I used to call that room my room, but there is nothing in it that is mine other than what I bring to it and sometimes I don't even get to sleep in it. It is just a guest bedroom like going and staying in hotel, except cleaner and has home effects like parents snoring down the hall. I guess I mention all of this for no reason at all except that it is strange that my parents are moving again. I guess it was strange everytime my parents moved. I can remember leaving Virginia from my seventh birthday party with my giant Care Bear in my arm looking out the back window and seeing people fade away. Moving is about changing and for some reason there is a sad element to that. For my parents moving, while laborious and expensive, it has always been a move up. For me it always ended relationships. This move won't end anything though. There is no one to leave behind or to wave at from the widow because they are just moving down the street. Carter and I have our own lives and we are not really going anywhere either. Maybe that is why it is a strange move: nothing is really moving.