My bedroom walls are yellow. Two months into this new place and still the only thing on those walls is the sunshine paint job.

It's the least finished room in the house. I'm attempting to not assign any kind of significance or symbolism or whatever to the bare walls in that room. Chalk it up to most of our artwork is out of the past, out of the places we lived together before we lived apart and even the most beautiful pieces have dragged little bits of ugly along with them.

These walls are no place for those ghosts.

We have some great photos of the girls, too, but my wise friend and informal feng shui consultant advises that, energetically, hanging them in the bedroom is a no-no. The kids have laid claim to every other space in the house, she says, my bedroom should be about the adults. A sanctuary.

The art should be lush and sensual, reflect energy of partners and of lovers not of mommies and daddies. What I'm going for is more love-den than pre-school.

I could tell you the walls remain naked because we don't have the money to buy new stuff for them — and that's a true, true thing. But it's not the whole truth.

The whole is, I'm always looking for just the right something, even if I can only afford to fantasize about actually buying it. And two months in, nothing. I don't even have a gauzy fantasy of how that room should be.

Sometimes, I guess, you just have to grow into a space, same way we sometimes have to grow into ourselves and no matter what we wear it all feels like a costume if it doesn't reflect the truth.

Sunshine and open space. I guess that will do for now.