I don’t know why

Sometimes I find myself looking around and thinking of The Next. I have always loved Home. Not one place, but every place I’ve made mine. Some more than others, but I have cherished the walls that sheltered me, the little bits of my love and wonder and delight I’ve scattered around inside them. I’m a nester, and it is both joy and comfort to me. When we moved in here, it touched me to find bits of another soul. The old couple had gone and the son sold the house and just left whatever he hadn’t wanted to mess with. The drapes and curtain rods they’d chosen. The little recipe box in the closet that didn’t hold recipes but rather notecards on all the flowers and plants in the yard. I kept all these for a very long time. I couldn’t keep the bunnies off their lilies - no idea what magic they had worked there - so I dug them all up and took them to my mother’s house and planted them in the sunniest patch. She can keep anything alive. So that little bit of soul came to be well traveled and lived happily there. The hostas have multiplied like mad here and the daffodils still poke their happy little faces up every spring. I think of those souls when I look at them, and I like that they’re still here. I don’t expect when I’m gone and The Next walk through these rooms that my love of this little nest will cross their mind as they make it their own. The walls will get painted. New light fixtures hung. I imagine there will be far fewer twinkle lights and candles, and the daffodils and hostas will just be daffodils and hostas. We come and we go like a breath of wind, and I suppose can expect to be thought of for just about as long. It doesn’t make me sad exactly. It just reminds me to appreciate my time.