Barbara J. Hamby

I’ve Only Just Begun

All of Floyd’s belongings are being unloaded and unpacked at his new home. There are empty spaces in this big apartment that I can now fill with packed boxes. I intend to do a mammoth job of sorting and tossing photos and snapshots now that I can clutter the long dining room table with them. I can eat anywhere. Maybe I can get that job mostly done before my sister arrives from Seattle on Saturday.

I have started sorting pictures. I stopped for dinner and decided to quit until tomorrow. I’m sure I’m not tossing nearly enough, but there is a lifetime of memories there. The bad ones are easy to get rid of, but the good ones want to hang around. When I see how many I’m keeping, I’m thinking it must have been a good life.

I’ve been so fortunate to have wonderful experiences traveling in the second half of my life and the pictures of those trips stick to my fingers. I can’t believe how many I took and how many sets of prints I had made. Fortunately, the last few years, the pictures were digital and are lodged in my computers and on CD’s.

My plans for a mattress to sleep on tonight were thwarted when I went to the storeroom down the block and found that someone had made off with the hidden key that unlocks the door to the large room where the small lockers are. Since it’s Sunday the office is closed, so I can’t get my foam folding chairs that flatten into a mattress until tomorrow. I’ll flip a coin between sleeping on the couch or snoozing on a recliner. Maybe I’ll trade off. I doubt that I could doze standing up on a bus as I did when I was in college, but I’m sure I’m tired enough to sleep almost anywhere.

Time to tune in a movie and relax.