The Ace Parking Lot

I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car in the Hilo Ace Hardware parking lot the other day watching people while my husband bought packing tape. A spry, quick-moving elderly lady came out the Ace door followed closely by a guy wearing an Ace Hardware shirt, wheeling a wheel barrow filled with stuff just purchased. They were followed out the door by an elderly man, the husband I assumed. Neither spry nor quick-moving like his wife, the man leaned heavily onto a wooden cane and was shaky and fragile in his demeanor. The wife then came bounding back to him to ask for the car keys so that the Ace-man could load their purchases. The old man fumbled his cane from one hand to the other, trembling with every movement. He searched, painstakingly slowly, through the breast pockets and then the lower front pockets of his aloha-style shirt. No keys. Then he moved with lugrubrious effort to his deep pants pockets. I saw his wife hold out her open hand and roll her eyes in exasperation. Finally finding the keys, the wife snatched them from her husband's pale shaking hand and sped off back to the car and the waiting Ace-man. The husband paused and looked confused for a moment, and then recommenced his halting, shaky cane-walk into the parking lot. I slowly shook my head and thought about all the times I have been irritated with my husband while he searched through the multiple pockets of his shirt and cargo shorts for our car keys,thinking, "Get your act together!" And "How hard can be it be to keep track of your keys?" The kupuna in the Ace parking lot were probably 20 years our senior, but I could see our future in them. And I sent out a silent little hope that my husband would not be wearing cargo shorts, with their six-or-more pockets, when we are in our eighties. Because, if he is wearing cargo shorts, we will never get out of the Ace parking lot.