If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
Tao te Ching
I want so badly to write about something quirky or kooky that Charlie did. Charlie is the King of Kooky. He is the epitome of quirky. You can barely turn around without bumping into a goofy Charlie moment.
But I’m mad at him. He is harshing my creative juices.
Because every day, Charlie wakes up before me and grinds coffee beans, and French presses them, and places my freshly washed giant elephant mug (I call him Elmer) in front of the carafe. He sets the cream out for me. While the coffee was brewing, he likely emptied the dishwasher and tossed in any dishes that had collected in the sink the night before.
He goes to work. Or now, he goes over to the dining table where he has set up his three-screened center of operations. I can’t say that he loves going to this job, and if I were healthier, we might even be able to retire. But I am too young for medicare and I need insurance and this company provides great insurance. Plus he knows how much I love this house of ours, and how much I put into making it a home, and how much I’m not quite ready to leave it to venture off to our retirement digs elsewhere. So he works. For me.
He checks in with me every day, whether he is at work or here, many times, just to see how I’m feeing.
When he is ready to stop working, he checks in again to see if I feel well enough to make dinner. And if I’m not, he never questions it or lets disappointment show in his voice. He just stops somewhere on the way home to pick up dinner for both of us.
When he is at work, that notice gives me an hour to prepare dinner when I am well enough to do it. Since he is home right now, I missed out on that “notification.” When I finally wandered into the kitchen I saw that instead of coming in to ask me about it, he had just started making dinner on his own.
After dinner he will always sit with me and watch some stupid thing on TV, even if he doesn’t like it that much, just to sit next to me for a while.
On the weekends when he is out working on whatever wheeled object possesses his soul at the time, he leaves the door to the workshop open, so he feels closer to me even though we are in different rooms.
Now, while he’s home, if I step over to the piano to sooth my nerves and ease my arthritis, he pauses what he’s doing to listen, and his normal scowl (his unfortunate and mismatched “resting bitch face”) lifts from his face as his heart leans in to the music.
When I walk into the dining room and see him hunched over his keyboard trying to deal with the insanity that is his job these days, I stare at the sunlight in his thinning hair (of which he is so embarrassed these days…. but to me the sight of it fills my heart with the evidence of the many years we have been together, our physical changes the occasional reminder that it has been a lifetime of love and laughter and angst and frustration and absolute joy), and I want to weep at the beauty of him.
After a week I thought that maybe the constant contact would wear thin, but it hasn’t. There is still not a single person on the planet with whom I would rather be quarantined (sorry, dear daughter, I love you bunches but had it been you in the kitchen searching for a knife, it probably would have been to stab me with. I’m annoying enough in small doses. Quarantine would severely strain the bonds of mother-daughter love… and who could blame you).
So yeah, I’m mad at him, because I just can’t find the funny today. I can’t find that kooky moment to make an amusing little story to write. It’s lost in the love.
And thus we survive.
Up the Tao Staircase 