Goodbye to an old pair of shorts

 I’ve been thinking about ends and endings.

No deep-dark secret there: Our five years in San Antonio is coming to an end. And for the first time in 47 years, I’m going to live outside my native state for more than a month.

Years ago, the Wise Woman bought me a pair of high quality khaki shorts. They were double-stitched and had a pocket inside the front right pocket for change. They’re the kind of shorts a person might wear to the country club. But I’m just not that kind of person.

And so these shorts became work pants. They were decorated with white paint from the house in Galveston. The splashes of dark brown were from staining the floors in San Antonio.

There were signs that these shorts had worked in the garden: I’ve never actually won a fight with the Wise Woman’s roses.

Those shorts seemed to me to be indestructible, and I was feeling guilty about leaving them in the trash when the second and last U-Haul leaves, allegedly on Tuesday. And then, on a trip to the dump, one seam ripped, and they were gone.

In the past five years, we rehabilitated a little house that had been built for a working family in 1950. I’ve worn out and lost good tools, including an usual pair of short pants.

Simple things can stand for the complicated process of wearing down and wearing out. I've been thinking about that metaphor lately.