First they pull the rug out from under you. Then they sell it at a garage sale. That's what my parents did when they traded their turf for surf after 20 years as Long Island homeowners.

When children grow up and move out, parents experience the empty nest syndrome. But what's it called when parents move out on their kids and take the nest with them?

It's nothing personal. High taxes and low temperatures have the over 60-crowd moving to where the living is easier. The Klahrs are bound for Carolina. Jaffees to Tucson. And the Schoenigs are pricing Tampa townhouses.

My own folks also headed south. They just split their destinations. On the island, they got as far as Long Beach where they passed on the lawn and pool chores to a co-op maintenance staff. Then they winter in Fort Lauderdale.

It was quite an adjustment. For me.

Even though I haven't lived home in more than a decade, it's unsettling to have your past uprooted. It began with an everything-must-go-yard sale where I witnessed the trappings of childhood sold off for a song. The pewter candelabra, the seahorse kitchen clock. They were the belongings that belonged in this house. They were what gave our home its character.

They're just things, my mother said. And I suppose she was right, because the effects were more far-reaching after moving day. Consider the impact of having to look up your parents' phone number every time you call. It's a cold splash in the face that says you can always visit but you're not going home.

Of course, I tried. I made the inevitable visit back to the old neighborhood some time after the move.

I pulled up by the driveway and in an instant spotted the changes to our 70-year-old stucco house. New curtains framed the windows, the front shrubbery was gone and a stockade fence blocked the side yard. It wasn't good or bad. It was just different.

More than anything else, I wanted to go inside and see how the new owners settled in. How they arranged the furniture and re-arranged two decades of a family legacy. Instead I sat in the car and watched the TV's flickered lights pour through the living room window. In those brief, quiet moments, I swear I heard my dad snoring on the couch.

When our parents are easing into retirement, many us are at an age to realize that little things have larger meanings. That's not just a ring of azaleas outside the window—they're the Mother's Day gifts of too many years to count. Call it the first wave of nostalgia when you're grown up enough to miss the things that remind you of what you were.