This was a comment on another site that got too long~
A really healthy marriage is about being defenders of each other's solitude.
Occasionally taking a selfish day, and being given it, gladly.
Never taking it for granted. Always being grateful, and generous. It takes a zenlike attentiveness. Done well, the burden is lighter, never heavier.
Unless the beloved is suffering, and I cannot help. Then, it is unbearable.
But on a more prosaic note~
D and I cannot shop. Especially not for food. We walk into a grocery store, and cannot figure out what we want to make for dinner, what food to have in the house. It comes in part from living a block away from a large grocery store for many years. Several trips in a day to finally, actually, get what we talked about needing the night before, was not unusual.
The rule about not going shopping hungry doesn't work for us. Today we had a lovely lunch at India Quality, then stopped for groceries. It took a great deal of will to walk out with makings for dinner. Had we just come out with mustard, a roll of paper towels and a lemon, it would not have been unusual.
There was a phase where we kept thinking we had salsa, so didn't buy any, only to get home and we were out. So, over the next week or so, we remembered salsa. Wound up with four jars in the fridge, each time exclaiming,
"Oh, yeah, we finally did get salsa."
To this day, when in the grocery store, if we seem to be starting this cycle of confusion again (it has happened with other items, to a lesser extent) we say, "Yeah, but do we have salsa?"
This may have also been the time I couldn't get the jar open, and tried the trick of turning the jar over and hitting the lid on the counter. Only I must have slanted it a bit, and it shattered into a shower of glass and salsa and, indistinguishably, my blood. It was shocking, and very funny.
We do, in fact have three jars of salsa right now, but that is variety, not brain cramp. Really.
(Still having to stand to write, so these are patchy posts, scrabbled writing. Moby's eye looking better, D's knee will have a scar, but is healing. I can sit through lunch, which is a vast improvement. When normal service resumes, assume I am feeling all well.)
9 comments:
I'm glad that you are all healing, and that you have enough salsa. One never knows when the craving will strike...
Ted and I went to the store twice this weekend because we were out of sugar for our coffee--and twice we came home with everything but. Do you think it's the humidity?
We went overboard on cheeses for awhile; the cheese drawer is still overloaded from our separate impulses to buy cheese.
I think I have about four rolls of first aid tape. Just because.
Wishes for speedy healing.
I think, your rather comical salsa situation aside, that healthy marriage may take a certain rare chemistry between partners...
and while the chemistry isn't enough without gratitude or generousity, without attention, neither is anything else enough if the basic chemistry is lacking.
Just musing...
The way you describe not being able to shop is just like the way I am not able to pack for a trip! Oddly, that makes me feel better about it. ;-)
Not like you can really have too much salsa, especially if they are all different flavors and temperatures.
I do think it is the dewpoint.
Cheese, Gromit.
I have lots of tape, but that is from accidentally bringing it home from work.
Can't have a good marriage with a bad person, certainly. I prefer to think real, lasting love is attainable, between two reasonably compatable decent humans. I don't think D and I are special, we just kept trying.
I had to really learn to pack for trips, and I ALWAYS miss something. Once, for an overnight trip to an amusement park, I forgot the overnight bag. Had to buy clean t-shirts, and rinse out underwear. Glad you feel better.
Now I am a FABULOUS packer. Typed lists, tick-marked off. Little first aid kit, little tiny raincoat, blah blah blah.
And so, when I check that my ticket envelope from the travel agency is there - for the fourth time before leaving - imagine my shock and surprise to find, when I get to the airport, that the ticket itself, is not IN the envelope.
Duh.
And my contribution to the grocery overstock list is butter. I have three pounds in my freezer because I keep thinking I should have a spare.
And it's not as fun to overstock butter as is it is salsa...which even has a fun name!
It's coffee beans for us!
Post a Comment