Oddly amused is better than irritated, right?

In the middle of this afternoon’s heavy rainstorm, someone rang the doorbell and beat hard on the door. A jolt of adrenaline coursed through me. I jumped up and ran to the door in time to see the UPS man scampering back to his truck. I stood in the doorway watching as he wrestled a huge, bulgy, box into position to lift it. The box had split open and he was stuffing books back into the hole. I recognized the slim, peach-colored volume of A.A. Milne’s “When We Were Very Young.”

Luke! Oh my. He’d said he was going to ship his stuff home. I wondered what had fallen out and been lost between Chicago and here. The UPS man hollered at me from the truck. “This is what you get when you load 20 lbs of groceries into a 10 lb bag.”

I smiled sheepishly and answered with something clever like, “Heh heh.”

The poor man ran back to the house through the pouring rain with his unmanageable load and plopped it on my entryway floor.

I examined the split. “Gosh. I hope nothing got lost.”

“No, ma’am. It split open when I tried to lift it. Everything should be there.”

“Are there any more boxes?”

“No.” He sounded relieved. “That’s it.”

“Thank you!”

He ran back to his truck, and I surveyed the soggy mess, slipping a couple of books out through the opening. Wet. Not good. I ripped the top off and started unloading. Lots of books. Clothes that had been jammed inside without regard to folding or organization. A speaker that goes to . . .? Some other stuff wrapped in crumpled clothes. More books. Many of the clothes were damp, so I started piling them all in dark and light piles to wash them. I felt something solid in his burgundy, corduroy pants’ pocket. His cell phone. Perfect. So much for calling him.

More books. A broken wooden rack of some sort. I spread all the books out on a towel and carried the other items into Luke’s room. I’ve gone through all the pockets, and I’m in the process of washing all the clothes, except for a very shrunken, girls’ wool sweater that could fit a four year old. Hmmm. Don’t ask me.

I know this isn’t all of Luke’s stuff, but I don’t know if he shipped the rest or did something else with it. I won’t be able to find out till he gets home on Monday, either, because I can’t call him. But I’m not going to worry about it. As Luke would say, “It will all work out.” Somehow, with Luke, it always does.