Marriage Moats-My Halo Awaits

Published: Sat, 07/02/11

Marriage Moats

Caring for Marriage

John has a tendency to lose things. It is an interesting contrast to his remarkable ability to find things. If you are chatting with him at a party, and the conversation meanders over to the origin of of the word gossip, or how far Toronto is from Dawson Creek, he will either pull the info from his vast memory banks or slip his IPhone out and google the question.

"Gossip is from the idea of God sibs, or fellow children of God. It started out as a word for checking up on your brothers and sisters, because you love them," he would casually tell you.

"Four thousand sixty kilometers."

It is never dull being married to someone who can easily converse about the current exploration of graphite as a replacement for silicon in computers, or the grammatical accuracy of a sentence like "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

But knowing where his keys are is an Achille's heel.

I take inflated pride in knowing where I put things.

"Mom, where are my pink flip flops?" Hope cries from deep in her bedroom.

"Under the couch in the living room, next to the Lego Buzz Lightyear," i shoot back without a pause.

Secretly I shine my Mother badge. But one of the pitfalls of being prideful about knowing the whereabouts of the personal belongings of a large family can be contempt for those miscreants who lose things. Hence the lead emotion when John asks where his glasses or keys are is not altruism.

I have worked on this. In theory I consider forgetfulness to be a lesser travesty that criticizing the forgetter. But the habit has grown unchecked for many years and is not easily ousted.

Last night John asked where his portable keyboard was. I took a deep breath, and closed the door on criticism. I held the thought that I wanted him to find it, and I prayed for kindness. Then, three startling words popped out of my mouth.

"Try your suitcase." I could not mentally retrieve his last trip, or whether he had indeed taken the keyboard, but it seemed plausible. The suitcase, as chance would have it, was eighteen inches from his feet, and he stooped down to check.

"Here it is! I remember! I took it to the barbershop weekend! Thanks, dear."

In my less evolved moments, I think that I want John to stop losing things. Put your keys on the hook and stop asking me.

But then, I would be stripped of the chance to serve him so often.

Photo by Jenny Stein

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