We’ve been through this before. This time though, it’s in reverse. This time, the feelings are different. 

When the dining room filled with bags and boxes in early May, I was eager for it all to be gone, for the teenager to sift through the dirty laundry, dorm decor and other bits and bobs carted home from the first year of college. I begged for my table back, my floor cleared of it all. 

I didn’t just want my dining room back, although that was part of it. 

I wanted it all to be put back in its rightful place. 

Only then would I feel that my child was truly settled back into this home where they belong. 

As the return to college looms, the dining room is filling up again with bags and boxes. 

The floor is now covered in plastic tubs filled and waiting to be stacked in the back of the car. The table has become a hodgepodge of cleaning supplies, towels, kitchen necessities, board games and other items that will soon be piled together to fill all the available spaces in vehicles, precariously placed like the wooden blocks in a game of Jenga. 

The dining room has slowly begun to look just like it did three short months ago. 

This time, I’m in no hurry to get the room back. 

I don’t need my floor cleared. I don’t need my table emptied. 

I’d live in this unsettled space forever if it could mean keeping my child here at home where I wish they still belonged.