Carry-on only

My wife packs for two weeks in Europe in a bag that would fit under the seat of a bicycle. I've watched her do it. It takes eleven minutes. She has a system. Everything's black or navy, everything rolls, there's a small bag inside the bag for the things that plug in, and she's done, and then she sits on the bed and watches me. I am not a light packer. I'm a "what if" packer. What if it rains. What if we get invited somewhere nice. What if the nice place is also cold. What if I need the other shoes. There's a version of me on every trip who needs the other shoes, and I've never met him, but I pack for him every time. This trip, Lisbon and then somewhere in the hills, she made me a deal. Carry-on only. If I could do it she'd stop mentioning the time I checked a bag for a weekend in Chicago. If I couldn't, I'd have to hear about it, and she'd earn it. Day one of packing I got it down to a carry-on and a "personal item" that was, technically, a second carry-on wearing a disguise. "That's a duffel," she said. "It's a personal item." "It has a shoulder strap and a shoe compartment." "Shoes are personal." Day two I took out the other shoes. I took out the jacket for the cold nice place. I took out the second book, on the grounds that I'd never finished a first book on a trip in my life. I took out the backup charger, put it back, took it out again. Day three, the morning of, I got it into one bag. One. She checked. She did that thing where she lifts it to feel the weight and nods once, like a customs officer. "You'll be fine," she said. And here's the thing. I was. Lisbon was warm. The hills were warm. Nobody invited us anywhere that required the jacket. I wore the same two shirts on rotation and washed them in a sink and nobody cared, because nobody has ever cared, in the entire history of travel, what I was wearing.

I did need the other shoes. Once. On a cobbled hill, day six, in the rain that I'd also packed for and then unpacked. I slipped, went down on one knee, tore the trousers, and she helped me up, and she looked at me, and I could see the sentence forming. "Don't," I said. "I wasn't going to say anything." She was going to say something. She's saved it. She's got it in a small bag inside the bag, with the things that plug in.