Leigh Kimmel says:

It was truly amazing how much one could accumulate in a couple decades of living in the same house.

When Ken Redmond first moved into this house, right after he’d signed on with NASA, the place had felt barren. Some furniture that had belonged to older family members downsizing, and other stuff picked up from various thrift stores around Houston, and it still looked more like a barracks than a home.

Now he was the one downsizing, and a lot more than even Grandma when she had to go into assisted living. Each family member got a five-kilo personal allowance, and as an engineer working flight ops, Ken knew just how generous that was.

At least they didn’t have to worry about physical copies of important documents, so there wouldn’t be any situations like an old Air Force buddy’s teenage daughter who’d already filled her moving allowance with personal treasures when her mother presented her with an envelope full of paperwork, and told her it were her responsibility. When it was time for the movers to take everything to her father’s new duty station, that envelope was still sitting on the kitchen counter. Now that she was living independently, she was running into problems because she could no longer produce certain documents without paying fees to the government body that held them — and in the case of a couple of medical offices that had since closed or a school that had burned in one of the western wildfires, could not be obtained at all.

But even without that burden, there were still painful choices to be made. He’d soon discovered that even taking pictures instead of things had its problems. So many of those photographs were from the old days of chemical film and prints — and even at a gram or two per, they added up fast. Scanning took time, especially when he had to pull them out of envelopes or from albums to run through the scanner. How much compression to keep storage requirements to a reasonable level, especially for ones he’d put on physical media rather than leave on the cloud, without compromising on quality?

Just going through some of those old images brought back memories — like his old girlfriend back at Springs Valley High School. He and Denise had been an Item — right until her dad’s company had said you’re transferred to Oklahoma, and boom, Denise was gone. They’d tried to keep their relationship going, but back in those days long-distance calls were expensive, and stamps weren’t cheap either, not to mention the hassle of writing out what you wanted to say and getting it in the mail, then waiting days or weeks for a reply to wend its way back to you.

Throughout his time at Purdue he’d still felt a certain obligation to Denise, although letters and phone calls grew ever more infrequent as their studies became more demanding. He’d wanted to formally break up face-to-face, but every time they thought they had the meeting arranged, something would come up. And then came the day when his letter to her came back with “not at this address” written in an unknown hand, and he knew it was over.

By then he’d been commissioned and sent to his first duty station, and the Energy Wars were in the offing. He’d done some casual dating in the towns adjacent to the base, but he’d kept it firmly casual. Unsurprising that none of them had gone beyond a movie or two.

Meeting Jenn had been almost an accident. He was the newest engineer on the team here at NASA, and they’d all gone out to a new restaurant. The food had been so good they’d all come back, and after a few visits, odd treats would be coming out “compliments of the chef.”

Ken smiled at the memory of those first tentative steps, and the moment when everything changed. And now, almost twenty years later, he and Jenn were moving their family to Shepardsport, where he would be heading up Engineering and she would be handling Food and Nutrition.