Just visited my father-in-law last week and got him talking about the time he spent helping out at a family farm in Rutland, Massachusetts back in the day. He talked quite happily about cutting the hay and loading it into a wagon and then filling the barn with it–so much work, and more technique to it than a slothful type like me would have figured. He said he had a knack for packing the hay just right in the wagon. It hit me that though my husband has never once loaded hay into a wagon or barn that somehow that skill was transferred to him–slightly mutated–so that he has a knack, or an obsession perhaps, for packing a suitcase and car just right. Or so he thinks.

Unfortunately for him, my family possesses no such hay-making or packing skills. I come from a long line of manure spreaders.