At mealtimes, there are two of us now.

For the first time in decades, I can do a week's worth of laundry in just several loads.

At night, I no longer leave the hall light on, as no one is coming home after I crawl into bed.

And when my husband complains that someone didn't screw the mayonnaise lid on tight, he can only mean me.

After 28 years, our nest is empty, the kids are gone. Elly, the youngest of our three children, has left home.

It is Saturday evening and my husband, Steve, and I have just finished dinner: hamburgers on the grill, corn on the cob and watermelon. We are sitting at the picnic table where our family has eaten many summer meals together.

A large maple tree shades the table, and sitting here, I can clearly see the lay of our land.

Downhill is the barn, which once housed pigs and goats and chickens, but is now used primarily for storage: old bicycles and discarded furniture, a plastic wading pool, snow sleds and something the kids called "Hunk of Junk," a walk-behind garden tractor that Steve fitted with an old metal seat and sulky. On the back, he fastened a wooden plank for passengers, and the three kids loved riding around our yard on the contraption.

Now it sits idle in the barn, too far in disrepair to be resurrected for any future use.

Also within my view is a flower bed where the kids' sand pile use to be. It is just outside my kitchen window, and I liked watching the children play. Now, rose bushes, daffodils and hydrangeas grow in the loamy soil.

Looking uphill, I can see the wild cherry tree that once held the kids' rope swing. After summer meals, they would hop down from the picnic table and play on the swing while Steve and I talked.

Several years ago, Steve removed the branch that held the swing; the rubbing rope had strangled the limb, and it was no longer safe for the children to use.

Most of the limb was cut into firewood, but I salvaged the section where the rope fastened to the tree. The log, still laced with the rope, is now displayed in the flower bed.

Sitting at the picnic table, immersed in thoughts of my children's lives, I feel stunned by how swiftly time has passed. "Where did it go?" I wonder. "How can it be over?"

For almost three decades, caring for my children has been the focus of my life. Now, the youngest has left for college, to start a life of her own.

Although Elly will likely return home for the summer, her focus will begin to shift away from the house where she lived for 18 years, where she ate with her family at the picnic table and played with her brothers on the rope swing.

Sitting here, I try to imagine our house without children. Already it seems bigger, quieter. There is an echo-like feeling in the long hallway and, when I descend the steps to the lower level, I often pause at the bottom where Elly's bedroom door is always ajar.

I often tell my children that change is inevitable, but this is one transition that is going to take some time to adjust to.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@zoominternet.net.