We're Not Empty Nesters, Yet...But We Will Have A Guest Room

 It was strange opening the door to my daughter's room and seeing it empty. It's like the front room in January...where's the Christmas Tree? The room is yet more proof that life continues to march forward, whether we like it or not.

I grew up in a home where each of my two siblings and I had our own rooms...eventually. My brother and I shared a room for several years, but when my cousin Kris graduated high school and moved out, my brother moved into her room leaving me with a room of my own. That's the way it stayed until my brother graduated and moved out, then me, then my sister. It was the first time we had a guest room.

Guest rooms are still foreign to me. After my father died, we did a lot of traveling visiting family. I think it helped my mother handle life without her husband. Fine with me--I loved (and still do...) my cousins. And because many of our cousins were the same age, they didn't have a lot of guest rooms, either. We slept on the floor in sleeping bags and I didn't care. Of course, I was a kid so my body was better equipped to sleep on the ground. We didn't need a guest room...the living room suited us just fine.

In a few months, we'll have a room that will not be used on a daily/nightly basis. I thought we could now properly house, albeit temporarily, guests. What's funny/interesting is we hardly ever have people over, mostly because we live far away from family and friends. My family is in-state, but several hours away. My wife's family is mostly out-of-state, so we can have a place for them if/when they come to visit.

As we get older, so do the kids. They move out, get married, begin to build their own lives. Yes, when I think about becoming empty nesters, having unused rooms doesn't come to mind...

Or, it didn't, but does now.

I'm happy my family is growing, expanding. It's more proof that the one constant in life, is change.