Jim Olson and his boy moved me on a Wednesday. They backed a flatbed up to the farmhouse porch and wouldn’t let me carry anything heavier than a lamp.
I took my bed. The couch. The kitchen table Dale and I bought at a farm sale in 1981, and four chairs. My sewing machine. Dale’s recliner. And nine boxes.
Thirty-one years in a house, and it came to one flatbed load and whatever fit in the trunk of a Buick.
The rest I gave to the Olson boy’s wife. She cried over the canning jars.
Jim stood in my new front room with his cap off, turning in a slow circle.
“Well, Judy. It’s snug.”
“It is.”
“Dale would’ve had that porch step shimmed level before I got the truck unloaded.”
“He would have,” I said.
We both laughed. Then neither of us did.
I hung my curtains. I put Dale’s recliner by the heating stove, facing the window. I set my African violets on the sill over the sink, where they could watch the trucks.
