She's Indispensable, If Only In My Mind
You know, in these days of stay-at-home-ness, your spouse / partner / S.O. whomever they’re known, becomes indispensable. I just know that if I didn’t depend on my wife so much, I wouldn’t do a whole lot of things I do wrongly. The least of which would be choosing the correct type of footwear to go outside to our car on April 1st, this year. No fooling.
It’d be one thing if our car was parked in a garage or at the very least on a raised dry surface on a route from the house that wouldn’t entail encountering low spots that would invite water to pool, but as our cars are parked about 25 yards from the house below the boughs of some cedar and birch trees, between which exists a mired landscape of water-soaked vegetation that by the middle of June we would normally call ‘grass’, but this year we call ‘swamp,’ my choice of footwear was totally irrational.
We live in such a place that we could very easily meet a blackbear outside our door, or see a pack of timber wolves: those big carnivores that eat deer and farm animals for snacks then eat a coyote as a breath mint or use as dental floss. At any point, gigantic eagles might swoop in and carry us away; or rabid skunks, ferocious fishers or frantic ferrets, weird weasels, crazy cougars, barking bobcats, laughing lynx, frantic fox and raging raccoons could all leap from their lairs to harass us at any time.
Or we might spy a Coronaocerous peering from behind a tree, so we old folks have to look out for each other.
That is, we live in a place where there aren’t sidewalks, concrete or otherwise, to walk anywhere -- or run if necessary, something you do not want to do upon meeting a bear or wolf or Coronaocerous, so the subject is moot. Why I brought it up, I don’t know, except to explain why, on April 1st, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic shelter-in-place event, I chose to casually slip my sandals on to go out to my garage-less car for some inane reason I have yet to sufficiently explain to myself, other than blaming my wife for not stopping me; proving, once again, that she’s the linch-pin that insures that I do everything right.
The one time when I could’ve really used her input, she failed me. What am I to do?
“Where were you when I put on my warm fuzzy socks and decided to put on my sandals?” I asked her from the basement steps after the fact.
She just stood in the kitchen, a cupboard door half open behind her; the kitchen clock tick-tocking off her right shoulder, as if she didn’t know a thing I was talking about, then said,
“Have you taken your medication?”
“I trust you with my life,” I said as I took off my wet sandals, one by one, and then my wet socks, one by one, standing as I was doing, just inside the entry door on the stairwell.
“I trust you not to poison my food or electrocute me while I’m in the basement shower, and here I stand in soggy socks and mud-soaked sandals, perplexed as to why you ever let me do such a silly thing as wear this kind of footwear outside the house--in April!
“For not a half hour ago, there was a melt-water mini-Mississippi rushing through our yard toward the creek, and you thought nothing of me choosing to wear inappropriate footwear, with absolutely no free-board, outdoors, across a sodden yard that squirts and wheezes underfoot. I just can’t believe it.”
She stood, stock-still; an ever-so-slight expression of perplexity in her eyes.
I continued, “We’ve talked at length about either of us getting old one day and that we’d start to forget or do irrational things. We’ve discussed helping one another through life’s little changes when this would start happening; and the first time it happens, here I am awash on the beach of life with you nowhere to be found.
“‘Life doesn’t magically provide contingencies for such situations,’” you’ve long warned me, I know. But somehow, especially during these days of close confines and extreme personal sanitation, I let myself think that you’d never let anything adverse happen to me, and now realize, painful as it is, you can’t be there for me every minute of every day. I have to learn to take care of myself.
“Thanks for not being there, I guess.”
ReplyDeleteAnd this from the guy who invented Muck Boots
Proverbs 14:1 - Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands, lest she see to appropriate footwear.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note: Your description of the land and water around your homestead sounds familiar. Even though we live "up on the ridge" as some of the old-timers call it, we get our share of muck-n-suck - the kind that can find one stepping right out of a pair of shoes (ergo the boots most of us wear). Even though sogginess has arrived, we still have large patches of ice between the cabin and the outhouse - the very place that I enjoy playing ball with the pups. The three of us go slip-sliding in our roughhouse games, and yet somehow, manage to stay upright, or all four paws on the ice.
ReplyDeleteAs for your garageless state, that isn't always such a bad thing. You may recall that we had a carport to protect our vehicles. A year ago last month, we had a doozy of a blizzard and the weight of the snow brought the carport roof crashing down on said vehicles. What a mess. I guess you guys do need to worry about falling trees or branches.
Just a few reflections. JPSavage