The Key to a Successful Move

... is of course to unpack everything right away. That's why nobody ever successfully completes a move. This little drawer of knick-knacks and oddities has been stuffed away since about 1992, and I've only now pawed through the mess to see what's in there.

The collection of pins in the foreground dates to the years we lived in Colorado, where B and I met each other and married sixteen bliss-filled years ago.

Two of the pins are from Odyssey of the Mind, the competition for school children; you know, give them a straw, a bit of string, a ping-pong ball and a pencil and ask them to build a bridge. They can usually do it. B was a coach, and I judged the competition.

Four of the pins are from the national monuments and national parks we visited on a camping trip across Wyoming in a Volkswagen pop-top microbus, back when the kids were easily tucked away into small spaces, and B and I were resiliant enough to climb Devil's Tower.

My eyes have only recently become bad enough to need a magnifying glass, but I've had the hand-held glass since I was a boy. It belonged to my great-grandmother.