The primary goal of my May road trip to Texas with my sister Liza was to retrieve my belongings that were held by two friends in Corpus Christi.  During the mad dash out of town on Aug. 9, 2014, anything I wanted to keep but I couldn’t fit in the RAV4 was shoved into my friends’ hands for safe keeping.  A third friend also had some small boxes of mine but Donovan agreed to ship them to New York.  So that saved precious space in my sister’s car.

My biggest concern was that when we packed the car, we would have a fully packed car on the trip back.  I had made with cross-country road trips with an obscured rearview mirror.  Those weren’t fun.  I never knew who might be coming up from behind.

Before the trip, my former spiritual director, Sister Lou Ella Hickman, IWBS, had offered me some spiritual and Marian books.  I readily agreed.  Liza and I retrieved the small box after we had lunch with the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament sisters.

I set aside Memorial Day as the day for retrieving my things.  Late morning would be the best time to pack just in case a late afternoon storm rolled through the area.

The first stop was at Gerardo’s.  Gerardo was one of my former co-workers on the copy desk.  He, Donovan and Julie had helped me clear out my apartment on my last day in town.  He actually had persuaded me not to donate the bicycle.  Gerardo held onto the bicycle and a classical guitar with its signed case.  It took some effort to remove the front bike wheel.  Looking inside my sister’s SUV, Gerardo commented: “There is plenty of space.”  He was right.  The bike and guitar slipped in with ease.

The next stop was to Greg and Christy’s.  I had met couple at the Tuesday Bible study at St. Patrick’s in July 2013.  I was surprised to see how big their daughter Sarah had grown since I had last seen them.  The family had my two blue storage bins, a filing box and a white box.  I remembered that the bins weren’t full.  Greg and I broke down the box of books and fit the contents and the white box into the storage bins.  Liza, Greg and I packed the bins and filing box in the SUV.  Liza covered everything with the SUV’s gray tarp.  Because of the horizontal packing, there was an unobstructed view through the rearview mirror.  Sweet.  There was more than enough space for our luggage on the return trip.

Because the packing between the two houses were so short, Liza and I hung out with Greg, Christy and Sarah.  Eventually, we had lunch with our mutual friend, Diane McCravy, and Father Varghese at Town and Country on Alameda Street.

With my stuff safely back in New York, I can close the chapter of Corpus Christi in my life.  Of course, the contents of the bins must need sorting.  But that can wait until July.