Last night, I waved goodbye to my baby sister on the porch of her rental house in the city. A dull ache lingered in my chest as I drove away. We’ve done this before — two years of moving in and out for college — but this time feels different. No dorm. No summer back home guaranteed. A few days ago, I caught myself cradling her like I did when she was much smaller and thinking, This might have been our last summer living together.

Family math never holds still. You think you’ve accounted for every change, and then more comes. Someone leaves, someone arrives, the table shifts shape again. Sometimes the exits are planned. Sometimes they’re violently unexpected. Either way, they don’t wait for you to be ready.

There’s a kind of change you think you’ve already accepted — until it arrives sharper. Like my sister leaving for college two years ago, but now really leaving. Like celebrating that first high chair at Christmas, then by the next Thanksgiving watching the messy little girl in it scoot down as a messier little boy takes her place.

Like saying goodbye to my brother after his wedding weekend and thinking we’d never live in the same state again, let alone the same house. (Spoiler alert: I was wrong.) Those first years with them married were a doozy. There was a new seat at the table for every holiday. At first, it felt different. But somewhere along the way, the new seat stopped feeling new. Now I text my sister-in-law more than I text him. She is my sister. Period.

Sometimes there’s a space at the table you’re sure will stay empty. The kind of absence you stop trying to fill because no one could match the shape that used to be there. You learn to live with it: the empty chair, the unspoken gap in a photo. And then, without warning, someone new slides into that space. Not to replace what was lost, but to make the table something else entirely.

The thing about family, at least mine, is that it is the one constant in life. Our table is tight and messy, but there is always a place for you at it. The surest human thing in my life is ever changing. As it should. Because as they grow, I grow. One day, you watch your niece eat mashed adobo potatoes for the first time, and the next, she is showing you her first-grade lunch box for the fall. As she should.

Two weeks ago, I held my brand-new nephew for the first time. Tiny fists, wide brown eyes – perfect, impossibly new. Nothing compares to meeting a small human and seeing fragments of your favorite people, while knowing they’ll still become their own person. Someday, he’ll have his own hopes, dreams, choices, and faith — urged on by the witness of those who came before him, yet carried in a walk with Jesus that must be entirely his own. One day, he’ll find his own high chair at the table. One day, he’ll build a table of his own.

The math never balances — and then you meet someone impossibly new, and realize you were always meant to make room.

– louriz