Life is full of mysteries. There are the manufactured mysteries by Arthur Conan Doyle or John Grisham. There are the big mysteries concerning whether we have souls and, if so, whether it matters. There are the medium-sized mysteries such as exactly what happened to Amelia Earhart and who Jack the Ripper really was.

And then there are life�s domestic mysteries. Some of those involve singular incidents and wise women learn not to ponder them too often as, for example, why Mr. Philately was carving orange juice with a knife. Others are more universal and recur in households all over America. What does happen to the other sock, the other mitten, and fish missing from the fish tank?

Our house has a mystery all its own. The mystery involves the time-space continuum. We long knew that items which went into Kat�s closet never reappeared and we just accepted that fact. We mused that theories of black holes might somehow be related. We considered that Kat might be related to Mary Poppins and that her closet might somehow be analogous to Mary�s carpetbag but Mary would never, ever have disorganized junk.

But today we have proof that the mystery is deeper, far deeper, than we ever realized. The situation began innocently enough. Day-Hay wanted to rearrange her room to provide more floor space. She figured out how to re-organize her closet and desk to allow her to remove her over-sized dresser. We needed a place to put the dresser. Because Kat�s furniture and Day-Hay�s furniture match, it seemed natural to put the bigger dresser into the bigger room. Mr. Philately would then take Kat�s, which would fit in his closet, and I would replace my old �closet-desk� with his cheap, small dresser. Kat, being thoroughly Kat, saw no reason to make any change and resisted----unsuccessfully.

Her hesitation, of course, was no mystery. The child hates change. Never mind that she has needed a larger dresser for quite some time. Changing dressers requires, well, change. It also requires a bit of work. Eventually, however, she understood. She had no choice.

We promised that she would not have to clean her junk drawer. All she had to do was to transfer the items from her current top dresser drawer to the new, larger top dresser drawer. We even let her make the transfer while sitting on the living room floor watching �Noises Off!� She unpacked, she examined, and she transferred, item by item by item of junk. We watched her while she worked. She added not a single item. She simply moved items.

And then we saw it. We looked and we looked again. We even took pictures so you could look too:

Yes, the full old drawer had become the full new drawer even though the new drawer was substantially bigger. The same old junk really did expand to fill the space allotted. And we could not figure out why. Keeping life in perspective, we really did not spend much time wondering. We moved on.

The next step was to help Day-Hay move her bed. Because her room is so small, Day-Hay keeps storage boxes under her bed. She pulled them all out so that we could shift the bed around. She and I moved the bed and then I watched her put all the boxes back under there.

And then it struck me. I knew what had happened with Kat�s drawers. Somehow, someway, Day-Hay had sucked out the extra space and transferred it under her bed. That transfer was the only way that Kat could move items and end up with substantially less space while Day-Hay transferred items and ended up with substantially more space.

Mysteries. Life�s full of them. But sometimes the answers are in the very air around you. And that swooshing noise? It�s just space moving from Kat�s room to Day-Hay�s.

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