Last night she cleaned out her room-took everything off the walls, emptied the closet, donated/tossed/packed every bit of clothing that was in her dresser.  The recycling bin is filled. I put a huge bag for Goodwill in my trunk. She has two big suitcases packed for her summer in NYC, and three boxes put aside for Berkeley, several bins of her favorite books (her love of reading has been a constant), and a few bins of keepsakes for storage. That's a wrap. I can now sell/donate the off-white little girl furniture that we picked out 19 years ago in Baltimore, that has moved from our 1929 Tudor in Mount Washington, and then to the big new house in Howard County, to here in her teen room in San Diego-all the iterations of our life together as a family. We'll paint over the hot pink and put in a closet shelving system, buy a double bed and a desk for B (that he himself will only need for a year before he goes off to college), and A will finally get his own bedroom, after sharing for his whole childhood.  Suddenly, our house that was always filled and lively and loud, is seeming awfully quiet and too big for just us. I know we'll readjust to the space, and I'll calibrate meal sizes and weekend plans, and it will be a new version of our family and wonderful too. We'll still have visits and vacations and special times together as the six of us-but all of us really "home" and our own unit of six is now a memory.