Clothes hangers and the letter T
I was thinking about marriage and things, while I missed my husband, and about Addison asking me more than once, “How do you stand it?!?”. It being the whole weekends-only thing. I remembered how we were at a wedding reception, and someone went around with a video camera asking guests to give the new bride and groom advice. I think we said “never go to bed mad” which is really stupid because some nights you just won’t even go to bed, trying to out-stubborn one another.
It happens.
Then I thought for a long time my advice would be “always try to give 100%, because sometimes your other half can’t give 50%,” which is pretty good, but depressing.
On Sunday night, I was helping Ron get his things ready for the 5:30 AM wake-up call. Everything has to be laid out where he can reach it in the dark. I muttered and grumbled, because the leaving preparations make me cranky. His clothes for the next morning are hung on a hanger, and this hanger is hung off the left knob of the top drawer of our dresser. When he is done dressing, Ron automatically puts the hanger back on the knob.
Then I get up a few hours later, bleary-eyed and before caffiene, and I try to open the second drawer down to get my socks, and every Monday morning I run into the clothes hanger or it clanks to the floor. It makes me cranky.
This Monday morning, Ron was runnng late and rushed through the darkness, forgetting to kiss me goodbye. However asleep or awake, I am always aware of that part. I tossed and turned for a good half-hour. After a short nap, and waking again in the morning light, I still fretted over the forgotten kiss. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, sat up, fumbled for my glasses on the night table…
And there was the clothes hanger, moved off the knob so I could get my socks in peace.
It almost made up for a missing kiss.
At another point in the weekend, we were at the computer and Ron asked me to send him a reminder email to the hotel-apartment. It was short enough, I put it in the subject line with (nt) at the end.
“What’s the n-t for?” he asked. I explained it was shorthand from a certain kind of mesage board that had threaded subject lines that were laborious to go through to read the actual message. People got in the habit of placing the message in the subject line of the post, if short, with (nt) at the end, standing for “no text (in the body of mesage)”.
Fast forward to this morning. Mondays are okay, but Tuesdays start to get worse. Ron usually times a morning email to be waiting for me by the time I sit down. Since he knows I am grumpy in the morning, his email subject line said “Good morning sunshine (t)”. Of course, he knew it would make me smile, and there was text within with more smiles.
So I would have to say it’s the little things that make a marriage. They do add up. They make it easier to ignore that pebble in your shoe or deal with the rock in your path. With the little things taken care of, it’s easier to bear those boulders rolling down at you as you crawl up the mountainside of life. Those little things like homemade pancakes instead of from a box, or real potatoes peeled and chopped for hash browns instead of frozen hash browns potatoes. Or even slightly bigger things, like insisting the brand new large screen tv go in the living room, and not in the new den for boys in the basement.
Tiny things that aren’t all that hard, really, but they are selfless and make your partner feel all the more special, all the more cherished. And you really need someone watching your back when you’re dodging falling rocks.
9 Responses to “Clothes hangers and the letter T”
So right. Some of the best advice we had was ‘be kind to eachother’ which kind of fits in with what you’re saying, but also encourages you not to resort to petty insults in arguments!
Cx
That was awesome. You should submit it somewhere!
Well said.
I agree with you. When the chips really and truly down, I know I can count on the other half and that makes all the little irritations worthwhile. Most days.
And me watching Finding Forrester tonight and reading these comments while listening to Israel’s “Over the Rainbow”.
Isn’that amazing how sometimes you just want to strangle them, and then they suddenly do something that makes you laugh or smile and then your mad because you wanted to stay mad, My husband does that all of the time.
[...] Andrea warned me earlier about a post she had written today, without telling me what she had wrote. While I was waiting for the internet connection, I decided to watch a DVD. The one in the player was Finding Forrester. I was nearly through watching it when I noticed that my email had fetched. After reading her post via the RSS feed, I resumed the movie and skipped ahead to the reading by ‘William Forrester’ which starts like this: Losing family obliges us to find our family, not always the family that is our blood; but,the family that can become our blood. And, should we have the wisdom to open our door to this new family, we will find that the wishes we once had… [...]
It is definitely the small things. A Dr. Pepper when I don’t expect it can heal huge wounds!!! Love the post.
Wonderful post. I think I’m going to go hug my sometimes irritating love of my life.