Changes

I wasn't ready for this.

Just the evening before, I looked into my eldest kid's bedroom, her possessions either taken with her or packed into boxes and in the basement. Her dresser and desk cleared off; the shelf that was attached to the wall, empty. The sheets on her bed had been stripped off, washed, and taken with her.

The only thing that remained, unchanged, was the book shelf, in the corner of the room and next to her desk, was full of books from her youth and early teens. The chances of her reading any of those books again were remote.

I looked into the room that my kid had called hers for more than a decade with a heavy heart. She had started her life in the smaller bedroom that was the closest to DW's and mine, so that if she awoke in the night, we would hear her and be able to reach her as quickly as possible. It was only after her younger sister was old enough to have a bed of her own that we moved the two of them into the larger room. Sky-blue walls had puffy clouds painted upon them. Each bed had a large, canopy-like leaf over them. Every night, without fail, DW and I would tuck our daughters in, sit between the two small beds, and sing "Dream A Little Dream" before kissing them goodnight.

When the kids grew a little older, they wanted rooms of their own. Our eldest kept the bigger room and we moved some of DW's old furniture, from when she lived with her folks, up from the basement. A double bed with matching dresser and desk, which had originally occupied this room when we first moved in: a guest room for when we had visitors and a room that we had offered to a Korean student who came to Canada to study for a year.

Our daughter wanted to personalize the room, so we let her chose the colour of paint, the sheets, the curtains, and light fixtures. The blue walls with white clouds were covered with a light grey. The butterfly curtains were replaced with rich pink. Grey and white sheets covered the bed, accented with pink throw pillows and a wrap that matched the curtains. A small chandelier hung from the ceiling to replace the domed light that was in every room on the second floor. A book shelf was painted the same grey as the walls.

Our kid was happy with the results: the room looked more grown up and would last her until the day when she would go off to university or college.

And that day had come.

DW wasted no time in moving forward. Since the pandemic had forced us to work from home, I had moved to a small desk in a cramped corner of our basement. It suited me well, as I prefer solitary spaces. But DW was working in our dining room and did not enjoy being in the open and high-traffic area. When she ordered a standing desk and office chair, she moved our dining-room furniture over, into our living room, making it look cluttered and unsuitable for company--not that we were going to have any company, any time soon. With the furniture seemingly shoved over, our living room quickly became the dumping ground for all sorts of things. It was becoming a disaster area.

With our eldest in another city, working on her future, DW wanted to reclaim the room that had once been our guest room. She wanted to preserve a space for our daughter, for when she returned home for holidays, but she wanted the room to be mainly an office space, where she could work with a closed door. She also wanted her dining room back.

I wasn't yet ready to say goodbye to our kid's bedroom, but the very day after we had dropped our daughter off at her campus residence, we started stripping down the room. The bed and desk went into the basement. The dresser went into the mostly emptied bedroom closet. The wall shelf came down and into the garage. The grey bookshelf was emptied, it's books taken to the basement, and the shelf sent to the garage, to be taken out with the garbage, along with the wall shelf.

DW scoured Kijiji and found a used day bed, with drawers underneath for keeping sheets, comforters, and pillows. The bed could easily pull out to a twin bed, for when our daughter visited over the holidays.

Paint was purchased. The grey was covered with a warm, sunny yellow, and the baseboards and doors were given a fresh coat of white.

DW's desk was moved upstairs. When she ordered it, a shipping mixup had occurred and she had received only the base of the desk; the top, misplaced by the courier, didn't arrive until several months later. By then, the company from where DW had ordered the desk had sent a replacement, and we had two desks to use.

DW had convinced me to move upstairs, into the office with her. There was plenty of room for both desks. And because we had moved our daughter's old furniture into the same corner of the basement from where I worked, I was starting to feel closed in. We assembled the second desk and I moved upstairs.

Our desks face one another. With two large monitors, each, we can't really see each other. With headsets, we both listen to our own music and can't hear one another. We're hoping that when we have meetings, we won't disturb one another (hopefully, we won't have meetings at the same time).

It's just over 10 days since our eldest moved out of the house, and looking into her old bedroom, you can't see anything that proves that she had lived in this room at all. We're still waiting for curtains and I'm going through my photo library to choose some prints to cover the bright walls. By the time our kid comes back, for Thanksgiving, she won't recognize the place.

Our living room and dining room have been restored to their former selves and the front half of our house is no longer an embarrassment, though we still won't be entertaining for some time.

There are changes in our house: I just hope that all of them are for the better.