Your Parents House

It's a strange thing to visit your parents in another house when you're an adult in that it becomes so clear that the children have left. Now that my parents are free of us all I've noticed that their furniture matches and is of high quality, and that there are many things of value that are breakable out on display. This is the opposite of what I grew up in. When I was a kid we pretty much destroyed everything, so my parents never had nice things that matched. We had had a rather eclectic dish collection that contained mismatching silverware and was rounded out by a gas station and dog food plastic cup collection that I'm sure someone, somewhere must have been envious of. All my parent's stuff currently looks like someone thought about how things would go together before it was purchased and is lovely. It's like they never had us and children are a distant memory. Maybe that's why they smile more.