The room was empty, but that was only a perception. Actually, not being of new construction, it was not empty at all. It walls and door posts were invested with over twenty years of living, living by a number of folks who had owned the home previously.

Men, women and perhaps some children had lived there over those years. Each room had seen happiness and sadness, love and hate; but I was too busy with my own personal thought. I did not see, nor did I hear those sounds from the past.

Now that I am retired, I have the time to listen with greater clarity. I am the first owner of the houses in which I live today, so my first thoughts are about how I shall invest these rooms with the essences of my life, my reality. There is no guarantee that these pictures will be here, so the walls must be invested with my spiritual side, my happiness, my sadness, my victories and my defeats.

What a great loss I suffered when I did not take the opportunity to stop and listen to the walls in my previous homes in Modesto and in Campus Commons here in Sacramento. They were not new homes and probably had many stories to tell, stories that I did not take the time to hear let alone evaluate.