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They drive off, the three of them, in the oldest’s truck, and I walk back into an empty house. Not empty-sad, mind, just empty. And I think, there go my blessings.

I text my husband who is working away from home, and I say the same thing. And tell him I miss him.

I settle into the silence, magnified by the hum of the fridge and the oh-so-noisy click of the keyboard keys and the glug glug of the water as I pour it into my glass.

I look around my home, filled with things that make me happy, and think how breathless I am without the family.

I remember when the boys were small and we lived in that tiny house where the oldest boys slept in our closet and the youngest slept in the hallway outside our room. I remember when we moved from there, and how in the new house the boys slept in a room of their own with a door and everything, and I couldn’t sleep at first because I couldn’t hear them breathe.

These little times of absence, like today, are training I think. Helping me learn to breathe on my own.

But they are reminders, too. When I feel a lack of time or money or holiday or luxury, when I feel a lack of anything, I am reminded by days like today that all my really true blessings breathe and I am blessed above and beyond the edges of my cup.