Renewing my subscription

It’s been six years with this guy and I’m renewing my subscription to our cohabitation. It’s a good deal for me. I get what I want out of him most of the time, and when I don’t, it’s an opportunity to check myself. Sometimes I don’t even know what I want, I just want something different than what I got. Other times, our differences are a chasm I need to cross. After six years living together, when I look back at the widest, deepest holes between us, and see the terrain we’ve covered, I appreciate the ways we’ve changed. I’ve changed. I’m a softer, easier person than I was when we connected. Maybe because I’m happier. Maybe because I’ve been sober for six years. I still have the occasional temper tantrum. Ugly words gallop from my mouth. But it happens with less frequency. He dilutes my rage with affection. Slowly, we are becoming different together.

Now I clean less and he cleans more. Over the weekend he cleaned the ceiling fan and vacuumed the dust that fell on the rug. Then hours later, he had to tell me he did it because I didn’t notice. I was so deep in my mental wormhole that my ears shut down. I didn’t hear the vacuum cleaner, which in the past would have been a trigger for me to come running, curious about what he spilled or broke. Lately, he’s vacuuming up my assumptions. He started doing his own laundry. I consider that an Act of God. And he cleaned his car and reorganized his fishing stuff in the garage. Is this metamorphosis or Swedish Death Cleaning? I don’t know. 

He still works almost full time, three days a week. A while back, I started packing baby carrots in his lunch instead of chips. One day he requested “Bugs Bunny carrots” instead of baby carrots. I didn’t ask. I bought him whole carrots with tops and roots at the farmstand, and he noticed that they were sweeter. Double brain bomb—his and mine. His appreciation for the difference between machine-carved baby carrots and real dirt Bugs Bunny carrots renews my faith in humanity. Anything is possible. Maybe someday we’ll eat beets together.

Mysteries remain, however. I wasn’t feeling well and he volunteered to make breakfast for me. It was a risk I had to take. He made scrambled eggs and served them with toast and the eggs tasted amazing. I know this sounds simple, but he may as well have built the pyramids in our kitchen. There is always butter in the fridge. I keep it to appease him. He resents the austerity. Still, I don’t use it. I’ve forgotten it exists. Then he makes scrambled eggs for me with cream, butter and cheddar—the fatty patty trifecta. And they were perfect. He has known how to do this the whole time. Six years have passed with me doing all the cooking and he has had this magic trick in his back pocket. What else is he hiding?

He’s 71 and I’m 72. Our bodies are going through another phase of radical adjustment. I have several pairs of shoes I can’t wear anymore without drugs for the pain. Now we both wear Hokas. Oh, god. I can’t believe I’m admitting this. I hate the way they look. But my joints appreciate the added bounce that absorbs the shock of my steps on concrete sidewalks and clay trails. The man does not care about my shoes. He is not judging me by the height of my heels.

This summer I put my jeans away because they were too heavy and replaced them with yoga pants. For my adult life I have been one of those people who wears jeans or black almost all the time. A black wardrobe is the last mark of New York City on my life. When I pondered the yoga pants selection on Amazon, I saw a dozen colors and bought pastel yoga pants for hot weather. Then while he was shopping for fishing lures at Bass Pro Shops, I bought several pastel cotton t-shirts for myself. Now we are both wearing t-shirts and comfy pants and bouncy shoes. I don’t remember my grandparents dressing alike. 

So many small changes add up. Part of us is new. My life is radically different than it ever was, and yet it is exactly what I need right now. If you had told me a year ago that my future summer look would be pastel yoga pants with pastel t-shirts, I would have asked you what nursing home you were lost in. Same with him eating Bugs Bunny carrots. Inconceivable. I had to mud wrestle this man to get him to consider salad a meal, and here we are eating rabbit food together in perfect harmony. Change. We’re doing it. Whether we want to or not.