Happy Trails, Part 110: Put away … already!

I am married to Wonder Woman.

No, she doesn’t spin around and morph into a super heroine dressed in some goofy red-white-and-blue costume.

But … she’s a wonder nevertheless.

This woman with whom I have shared my life for 47 years has managed to find places to put possessions we had stuffed into a 2,150-square-foot house in Amarillo into a “luxury apartment” that is just a little more than half that size in Fairview.

Now, is every single thing precisely where we intend to keep it? Probably not. We’re likely to discard some of these possessions. However, as you look through our new digs you get the sense that it’s actually assembled in a livable fashion.

I credit Wonder Woman for this. She is the master of packing and unpacking. She is systematic in her approach. She takes time to survey the situation, then attacks it with gusto.

Wonder Woman is reluctant to take too much credit for this skill she exhibits. She credits it to the number of times she moved as a much younger person. She learned this packing-unpacking skill at a young age, she’ll tell you. So it becomes sort of second nature for her.

Me? I’m not wired that way. Although I do consider myself to be more adaptable than I thought I might have been. Our move from Oregon to Texas in 1984, when we both were in our 30s, required me to activate that adaptability wiring. It worked. I was able to acclimate myself nicely to life along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Then again, I left the proverbial “heavy lifting” to Wonder Woman, who arrived  in Beaumont a few months after I landed there. She got there at the same time the mover arrived with our possessions. And, yes, she was able to store our worldly goods into an apartment where we lived for a time until we decided to purchase a home.

We repeated this process nearly 11 years later when we moved from Beaumont to Amarillo. Same story, a new verse. Wonder Woman did what she knows how to do.

We’re retired these days. You know that already about us. Her skill at unpacking, though, remains unrivaled.

I am grateful beyond measure. I am one lucky fellow.