Left Behind

In two days it will have been one month since my family moved six and a half hours and 438 miles south of the home we’d lived in for the previous 14 years. Things in our new home are starting to feel familiar. I can now make it to the grocery store and my children’s schools without Apple Maps guiding me every step of the way. The heat feels almost normal now. Days that only climb into the high 70s feel crisp and cool.

But I still reach for the light switch in the bathroom where it would have been in our old home. I still turn the knob clockwise instead of counterclockwise when I am walking out the door.

I was cleaning the bathroom over the weekend and found bindis tucked between the glass and frame of the mirror hanging over the sink. When we first moved in there were spices in the back corners of the kitchen drawers. Cumin seeds hidden inside crevices of the cabinetry.

I wonder what my family left behind. Will the new inhabitants of our home find a lego forgotten in the built in bookcase in the living room? Will the smell of sage still cling to the carpet from Sundays spent smudging? Maybe a forgotten photo on the mantel?

What does what we leave behind say about us? What stories will they tell themselves about us? Will they think of us at all?

I wonder at the way our lives overlap. At the way we live in each others’ shadows, with each others’ ghosts.