I thought about the recipe card with enough written beside the chili powder.
I thought about the overdue library book I’d renewed yet again because I still wasn’t ready to let it go.
Mostly, I thought about a father who had driven forty minutes for what I insisted was only a minor surgery.
Because he knew I always called difficult things “minor” when I didn’t want him to worry.
He came anyway.
He always had.
The reading glasses now sit on Amber’s nightstand.
She took them home during her visit in May, and I didn’t fully realize how much that mattered until I walked into Dad’s bedroom and noticed the empty space where they’d always rested.
That small absence taught me something.
The house was becoming what it was meant to become.
Not a museum.
Not a monument.
Not a place frozen in time.
