Empty House
This morning I took Mika, Tom, and Madison to the airport. After stopping at a few stores, grabbing lunch with Gabe, and picking Eli up from school I returned to a very quiet house.
Matt was out running errands and the boys were upstairs, excited to be playing cars in the playroom. (The cars and the playroom were a little difficult to get to for the last month since we converted the playroom into a miniature guest house for the Mlacks). Eli walked into the playroom and yelled down to me "it is empty in here". He was right. Not only was the playroom empty, but the whole house seemed empty and quiet.
As if the house wasn't already empty enough, after dinner I figured it was about time to take the ornaments off of the tree before they fall off. I stopped watering the tree on Christmas so the branches are sagging quite a bit. As I started taking down all the Christmas decorations I felt very lonely. The house was still really quiet. All the garland, lights, and decorations that once added warmth and color to the house were gone and the space was now empty.
If the Mlacks were still here for the un-decorating, Mika would either help me take everything down, sit on the couch and chat with me while I packaged stuff up, or do the dinner dishes while I worked on the tree. Realistically, she would do all three. Madison would be upstairs with the boys, playing well for most of the time until Gabe started beating her up. Then there would be crying, denying and tattling. Tom and Matt would either be watching something on TV, playing with their phones, or most likely both at the same time. I should have taken all the decorations down before they left - then again it still would have felt empty.
The silence was torture so I broke with my normal holiday tradition of turning off the Christmas music on New Year's Eve and I listened to my favorite albums. The music put me in a better mood and since I had the volume so loud that I couldn't have heard anyone if they were there, the quietness was gone.
A number of people were shocked to hear that Mika and Madison had been here for over a month. The comments usually ended with something like "I could never have someone stay with me that long". My thoughts were "I can't imagine them leaving a day earlier!" One day last week Matt came downstairs and looked at me and said "for a moment there, I thought this was our real life - that we all actually lived here together."
It is easy to have someone stay with you when you truly enjoy their presence as much as my family enjoys having the Mlacks with us. I hope that everyone I love is blessed with friendships like the one we have with Tom and Mika.
Matt was out running errands and the boys were upstairs, excited to be playing cars in the playroom. (The cars and the playroom were a little difficult to get to for the last month since we converted the playroom into a miniature guest house for the Mlacks). Eli walked into the playroom and yelled down to me "it is empty in here". He was right. Not only was the playroom empty, but the whole house seemed empty and quiet.
As if the house wasn't already empty enough, after dinner I figured it was about time to take the ornaments off of the tree before they fall off. I stopped watering the tree on Christmas so the branches are sagging quite a bit. As I started taking down all the Christmas decorations I felt very lonely. The house was still really quiet. All the garland, lights, and decorations that once added warmth and color to the house were gone and the space was now empty.
If the Mlacks were still here for the un-decorating, Mika would either help me take everything down, sit on the couch and chat with me while I packaged stuff up, or do the dinner dishes while I worked on the tree. Realistically, she would do all three. Madison would be upstairs with the boys, playing well for most of the time until Gabe started beating her up. Then there would be crying, denying and tattling. Tom and Matt would either be watching something on TV, playing with their phones, or most likely both at the same time. I should have taken all the decorations down before they left - then again it still would have felt empty.
The silence was torture so I broke with my normal holiday tradition of turning off the Christmas music on New Year's Eve and I listened to my favorite albums. The music put me in a better mood and since I had the volume so loud that I couldn't have heard anyone if they were there, the quietness was gone.
A number of people were shocked to hear that Mika and Madison had been here for over a month. The comments usually ended with something like "I could never have someone stay with me that long". My thoughts were "I can't imagine them leaving a day earlier!" One day last week Matt came downstairs and looked at me and said "for a moment there, I thought this was our real life - that we all actually lived here together."
It is easy to have someone stay with you when you truly enjoy their presence as much as my family enjoys having the Mlacks with us. I hope that everyone I love is blessed with friendships like the one we have with Tom and Mika.
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