I’m sitting in a bed in a motel in Dunsmuir, the Dunsmuir Lodge.

Nice place.

Two beds, two rooms, bigger than some people’s houses, one bathroom, two TVs, microwave, empty fridge, coffee set up for the morning, little packets waiting for the famous Dunsmuir water.

I woke up from bladder pressure, turned on the lamp, quietly opened the door and crept past the sleeping pair, did my bathroom business, crept back into my adjacent room. The light was still on, so I took my trusty notebook and began to write.

The house is sold, we’re moving out, our big truck parked in front of the neighbors’ house. The truck locked for the night, because so much stuff from those years of living there was heavier and way more and we didn’t finish and we have the truck for another day, but the mattresses are loaded so we can’t even sleep on the floor as we did last night, one layer in an almost empty room.

Hence the motel.

Tomorrow we’ll finish up the rest and drive south to our real house.

I did what I could to help. I was Door Boy, opening and closing as the younger fitter two, four hands, carried and loaded the heavy stuff.

The house holds memories. We’ll take them with us.

That’s life. You accumulate more than you realize, move on, and leave the empty house.