I decided no more, no more total disarray in the bedroom and sitting room; so this afternoon I started.  I pulled out bins from the closet and went through them, separating into keep, Goodwill and trash piles. I was brutal; not so much trash, but a lot of Goodwill. That left me with several empty bins so I went into the sitting room and starting filling them with all the things resting on horizontal surfaces. Then I opened drawers and emptied them out – turned them upside down.  I did not sort through them today because today was “move the furniture so I can best access the scanner, the printer, the TV and the VHS/DVD player” day. Move out the stand-alone, long ago kid’s school desk and slide over the coffee table. Add a wooden thing (scavenged from a redecorating company in another city) about two feet tall with close-set shelves for paper separating. Put the scanner on one end of the coffee table, the printer next to it and on the far end another wooden scavenged thing.

Organize plugs and cords and connectors . . . and vacuum, vacuum, vacuum. The dog, by the way does not like it when I move from place to place. He will not trust me to be right back from the adjoining room. So he was up and down, going this way, coming back and making me feel guilty. I gave him dog treats – my answer for everything.

There was one box in the closet that did not have clothes, but papers and pictures and a jumble of stuff that had hastily been gathered up from a dining room cabinet. I was good and did not go through the photos – but I saw a few from long, long ago and I discovered I am now at that age when those times seemed a different life and somehow I was a different me. The one in the pictures was someone never to be again.

As I said, I did not tarry and go through them, staring for long minutes at a time; but something had been triggered and I got to thinking that perhaps there was a door that needed shutting. Things are never going to go back to what they were, ever. So, I guess you go on, starting from this minute, this very minute and do the best you can . But, damn it, you look out the window and down the road and you still hope to see that past come walking up.