To be alone in a house that once was full is to feel tender toward it, to show it greater care than usual. So you scrub the floor of the pantry closet and purge its contents. The kitchen faucet is now shiny and spotless, and the bedrooms are freshened by clean linens. This is not their usual state.

You are hoping that this is not the way you’ll always be. You’d like to have some of that old devil-may-care attitude, the one that helped you shrug off the untidiness and the disorganization. The years of toys ankle deep in the dining playroom, the piles of shoes by the front door.

Not the toys and the shoes themselves, mind you, just the ability to forgive them for standing between order and disorder.

It struck me yesterday that I am a house keeper. Not a housekeeper. The word break is crucial. I’m not a professional. I’m an amateur, one who comes to the task not from duty but from love.