I spent my first week back in Virginia at my parents house in Roanoke. It felt weird to come "home" and call it "vacation," but it somehow managed to feel like both. I spent time with friends, getting drinks, having dinner, and going on coffee dates. I went to the gym and then to the spa with my mom, had a wedding dress fitting, got dresses for my bridesmaids, cuddled with my dog, and read a book. It was great.

On Friday morning, Rob flew in from Minneapolis and I picked him up at the airport. We got coffee and did some grocery shopping for my mom before heading home, then back downtown for lunch with his friend, Ed. A few hours later, Rob's brothers and their friends were arriving, and we went back to my parents' house for beers and hard cider on the back deck. The next day his parents arrived with his oldest brother, his wife, and my sweet nephew-to-be. My best friends Tina and Emma came over, and everyone got acquainted and we had a little engagement party.

Sometimes I forget that we've shared three apartments.

The first one was in Roanoke, where I found anxiety and started graduate school. I felt like such an adult, grinding my coffee beans fresh every morning and parking in my garage. Rob lived there over the summer, and then Christmas break, and then moved in for another summer after his graduation from Hampden-Sydney, but it felt less like our apartment than it felt like it was mine, even if it didn't fit.

The second one was in Charlottesville, with weird green carpet and a tiny kitchen, but a little office/guest room that made us feel like we had a home. We spent hours in libraries and computer labs, at bars with cheap drinks and cornhole set up under a string of outdoor lights, and were constantly with friends. I felt like less of an adult, with a part-time job as a barista and afternoons full of research, and I loved it.

Now we're in Minneapolis, in the high-rise apartment with a balcony and a pool we never use. It's big enough and everything is new and we finally have that bookcase from IKEA that I've always wanted. This is the apartment we have as an engaged couple, and it's the first place we'll live as newlyweds. What other defining moments (other than that impending Minnesota winter) will occur while we live under this roof, I don't know yet. But I'll look back one day and see it from the future, and I'll tell you what this place was like and what it means to us because of that.

After a year apart, I forgot that living together is something Rob and I have done before--the norm, really. We've left little parts of ourselves places and picked up and taken things with us, and now we're here, together (again).

After straining something in my arm on Wednesday, I took a little break from CrossFit and then ended up coming down with a little cold on Saturday, so I took the weekend even easier than usual. We spent a lot of time on the back deck in the morning with coffee, read books and fell asleep by the pool in the backyard, actually sat down to drink tea, and really only ventured downtown for 9:00 mass and breakfast afterward on Sunday.

Currently, there are several empty corners in my apartment.

The space where a coffee table used to be. The old home of a lamp. An empty bookshelf in the corner of the office.

There was a time in my life when these empty spaces would have been a cause of anxiety and sadness. Now I look at them with joy and see how full of hope they really are. As I pack things slowly into boxes and send furniture away, I am simplifying my life.

There's something very attractive to me about doing things that aren't easy. Maybe it's the runner in me.

Go the distance. Throw things away. Make life better.

I remember a very specific moment from when Rob and I were leaving Roanoke to move here for the year. I was emptying the refrigerator in an apartment that no longer held any of our things. A broom sat, propped against another empty corner and dust covered the floor of what used to be our living room. The muggy August heat of southwest Virginia crept through the old warehouse windows of the apartment, and in that empty space, Rob pushed the hair from my sticky neck and said "I love you." That apartment wasn't empty as long as we were in it.

I have learned that an empty corner is just the beginning of something new and better.