As I wrote last week, I have sold and moved out of a townhouse I've owned in Cambridge, MA  for 27 years. The day after the movers left I went back and photographed the empty rooms. I wondered if the place still held meaning for me now that my things were gone, would the empty space still resonate because I had so many memories and experiences while living there. 

The answer is: mostly no. 

This was the small living room. 

These widows, letting light into the living room but also to the dining room and kitchen up a 1/2 flight of stairs, were one of the things I liked about living there.

This is the stairs up to to the next level,  where the DR and kitchen are.

The dining room and kitchen, which I renovated several years ago, with steps leading up to the third floor.

This is the third floor bedroom that was my daughter's for the first 10 or 12 years until she moved out. It was purple then. It then became my office where the computer was and where several generations of 44 inch Epson printers were over the years. If any room got my heart pounding it would be this one. So much work and so many prints made right here.

This was my bedroom. 27 years of putting my head down to sleep.

I've been out now for a week a half and it seems the most normal thing in the world to be in my new place, an apartment in a new complex with a year's lease.

Isn't it odd how we do and don't remember? Asked to sum up the 27 years of living in this place I would describe it as being very good. Great location, convenient to my work and to the city, comfortable, safe and secure. Perhaps it is what we carry, what we retain that matters, not so much the physical manifestation of our years in a place. 

Number 10 Fort Washington Place wasn't anything very special, just a townhouse along a lane in Cambridge, MA. But the memories I have, of parties, dinners, meeting for coffee, laughing, recuperating after surgery, packing to leave and unpacking from a trip, times hard and times good, those are what I carry and value. For almost three decades this was home.

Thanks for reading.