The Vacant House

As a family, we like to play games. We play computer games, board games, video games, you name it, we like to play it! One of our favorite family games is Animal Crossing - City Folk, on the wii. I started out playing it by myself. Steve bought it for me when I first found out I was pregnant with Alexandra. It helped kill a lot of time where I sat in bed, sick all day long!
Eventually Steve and Dayne both started to play. They used my little character to plant trees and pick fruit and to go fishing, dig for fossils and catch bugs. We built up our little town museum, we built a bridge and got a fountain and eventually, we got Dayne his own little character.
When you start the game you have to buy a house. There are four little houses in the town that you have to choose from. For a long time I couldn't figure out why all those houses stayed when I had already chosen my house. When we let Dayne start playing we figured it out. I thought he'd get his own little town, but no, he got to move into my town and pick his own little house.
He chose the house on the beach and he loves it. He is very proud to say "MY house is on the beach, but mommy lives up by the store...that's not close to the beach where MY house is." And of course came Steve, he moved into the house by the river and by the bridge that we built, because he likes to fish. It's a little out of the way, but it's what he chose.
And so, there is the vacant house. The house on the hill, near the store, very close to the house I chose. It's like the game is screaming that a family without four is left with one vacant house...the empty spot that was supposed to be filled by Alexandra. In MY house I have a little room with a little pink bassinet, a really big teddy bear and a balloon. It's so silly, but it's just another little thing that I did to remind me that Alexandra is everywhere that I am, even in a game.
But that small empty house mocks me every time I run by it. The vacant house is not just a house in the came, it is a metaphor for our life now.