You Were Packing Your Car

Today I ran an early morning errand in downtown Tacoma and was contemplating the $5,000 damages our wood floors sustained during the Inauguration Day Flooding. More specifically, I was forcing myself to look at the bright side of things and contemplating what sort of wood color was going to replace the old and what sort of tile to put into the kitchen, which would've eventually led to fantastic imaginings of me redoing all the kitchen cupboards myself in a majestic show of Homeowner Ability (I'm almost to level 5!).

I heard the man first, talking about rough times in the economy and sighed to myself in agreement, then saw him. Older, balding and nicely dressed but wearing a bitter, tired face and packing a box stuffed with plaques, papers, a stapler and a small sepia globe into the back seat of his car. He was talking to someone who'd walked down with him, then wondered aloud how he'd thought everything wouldn't fit into his car.

And that was the saddest part--he'd imagined taking his entire life down the elevator and jamming it into his car and instead ended up looking at two tiny boxes, stuffed to the gills but not nearly enough evidence of the job he'd lost. The life.

What a terrible thing to be doing this early on a freezing Monday morning and I immediately felt guilty for stressing out about my floors when I can actually still afford to get them replaced. My floors won't fit in my car and for that, I'm glad.