Here is a moment
We are sitting in a 7–11 parking lot. At 2:52 on a Friday. Sean and I in our usual spots; him driving, me navigating, in a dusty Camry where the floor of my seat is covered in hospital discharge papers, and not just from today.
This has been a bad moon Friday. A day with plans that disintegrated. Today I stupidly collapsed an entire metal piano stand onto my right hand, crushing the knuckles straight across. Before the pain set in, before the vasavagel syndrome knocked me unconscious, I had time to think — You idiot. How on earth did you cause this. You absolute idiot.
Today the first Pod of our move was to be picked up, leading to a frantic drive to to urgent care for X-rays. He abandoned me on the doorstep of a packed waiting room, at the mercy of an angry Pod driver.
When he got back I was even more wounded. A finger splint on my hand and a sticky bandage covering a tetanus shot dot. We got into the car to finally head home and his calf cramped, horribly, suddenly, hilariously. It’s always hard for us not to laugh when this happens. Usually it’s in the middle of the night; he flings himself from the bed like an alligator has him. His response to agonizing pain is always laughter. Once during a violent round of Wii Show Jumping, he accidentally looped the controller cord around his testicles and yanked upward. He alternated screaming and laughing as he writhed on the floor for ten minutes. What else can you do??These are the things that just happen to us, and sometimes it seems like, to only us.
Which brings us to this moment. We’re across the street from a Trader Joe’s and a man is selling Nikes in the parking lot. We have rushed here in search of Gatorade — the calf cramps are caused by dehydration, and the move has dragged on for three weeks. “I think we need a Twix bar,” I say.
“Ok,” he agrees.
“And Cheetos.”
He brings back both Cheetos and Fritos.
It’s then that we realize the problem. We have sanitized but not washed our hands since the urgent care. The last thing we want is to dip our grubby, world-worn, pandemic heavy hands — one swollen in a splint — into bags of reviving chips.
So we do what we must: we tear open the bags and plunge our faces into them like horses. I offer to pour his Fritos into his mouth like he’s a dolphin getting a fish from a trainer- this is an old inside joke- so old we can’t remember the origin.
“I’m very glad,” I say. “That we are at the stage of marriage where we aren’t ashamed to do this.”
And then we start laughing. There is cheeto dust all over my nose. The drive home is long. The moving is endless. We will be injured in so many more ways in our lives. I would always rather he have a mouthful of Fritos than good table manners.
This is what I will think of when I need to remember I have a good marriage.
