I thought about my mother again. I wondered how the barbecue had gone. I hadn’t been inside her house in a long time, I realized. She had refurnished my childhood bedroom when I moved out, converted it into a guest room. I wasn’t sentimental about my childhood, but I did think at the time that this was a strange decision. In a way, I’d been expunged from the space. Maybe it was necessary, a small way of reckoning with our uneasy relationship, putting it to rest or starting over. The memory didn’t summon anger or sadness in me, as I too had tried to move on.
