The Room Behind My Son’s House

Moving Back Into My Own Bedroom

I moved back into my own bedroom on a Saturday, the same day of the week Brad had first come home for his birthday, which felt like something worth noticing even if it did not mean anything beyond coincidence. Brad helped me carry the cot and the space heater back out to the garage where they belonged, both of us laughing harder than the moment probably deserved at how light everything turned out to be once you actually picked it up.

The garage is just a garage again now. The lawnmower is back where it always sat. My husband’s tools still hang on that pegboard, each one still fitted to the outline he painted around it fifty years ago, and I have decided I like it better that way, a place for the mower and nothing else, the way it always should have been.

I keep the space heater out there still, plugged in, just in case, though I could not tell you exactly what I am keeping it in case of. Some habits from those two years have not left me yet. I still find myself, some mornings, glancing at the garage window out of old instinct before I remember I no longer need to check on anything out there at all.