Start Of September

All of a sudden the air is getting cooler, and there are groups of big black birds strolling through the yard, a sure sign to me that summer is coming to an end. Fall has always been a time of increased energy for me, so things are not all bad. I'm getting a second wind to do my Swedish Death Cleaning, too, and recently noticed a laundry basket sitting on the floor of the basement storage room that held seven large cloth/leather bags containing different chapters of my life. I kept looking at them, so I took that as a sign that I needed to do something ... read through them, remember them, maybe let them go. Slowly, every day, I pick one out to deal with. It hasn't been too overwhelming this way. One day, I found one that contained a nursing reference book a good friend had loaned me many years ago when I took an RN refresher course at Normandale College. The next day, I made a quick decision to just jump in my car and drive to her house to deliver it back ... I'd never even been to her house before, and she lives a good 40 minutes away. Kind of impulsive, it reminded me of someone I used to be. A little scary, too, as I didn't tell her I was on my way over. Anyway, I made it to her neighborhood, but wasn't sure which house was hers. I didn't have her phone number, either, so looked and found one of those sketch websites that always seem to have all of our personal information. Turns out I was only a couple of houses down from hers, and after I pulled up into her driveway, I got out of the car and we just kind of stood there and looked at each other until she said, let's go and sit on the deck and talk awhile. We sat and talked for three hours, remembering the old days when we worked together at the hospital, and all the people we hadn't seen for ages. It was great. I wonder what other memories that basement storage room will hold for me ...