The Empty Room

Our home has four bedrooms.  My husband and I share one.  Our oldest has one.  Our youngest has one. They say they want to share a room.  I shared a room for awhile with my sister. I refuse to let them share a room.

We have an empty room.

When we moved into our house it was just the two of us. We had only been married about two years. We had dreams of filling our home with children.  Let’s have four, we said.  Our neighbors would say, “That is a big house for just the two of you.”  We would just nod and smile. Yes it was, but it wouldn’t be for long we had hoped.

We have an empty room.

Things didn’t go as planned. We don’t have four children.  We have two. Well we have three. One lives in heaven. Two live with us. We still have an empty room. Occasionally it is filled with guests when they prefer to not stay in the basement.

We have an empty room.

The room has been used for storage. It has been used as “Santa’s Workshop.”  We attempted to turn it into a craft room.  We tried to turn it into a reading room.  But it never stuck. It was as if it knew it was supposed to be more. It was supposed to be a bedroom.  Yet it stood as a bedroom without a child.

We won’t have an empty room anymore.

Today we will work on filling the empty room with a bed, a dresser and a desk.  The closet will be cleared of the odds and ends that have piled up in there.  The room will be ready for a child.  The room will fulfill its purpose. The room will house an international student who will stay with us for the next six weeks and return again in the fall.

We won’t have an empty room anymore.

One thought on “The Empty Room

  1. Oh my. We have an empty room. The repetition of that sentence is so powerful. What was planned, and what is. The student doesn’t know she will soon be on Whitmore Planet. Just is time for a birthday for a four year old. I wonder if she has a baseball glove?

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