Gestures of care

Posing for some post-Margarita wedding pictures - April 9, 2017. (Brandy Wade Photography).

Almost every morning, first thing, I get out of bed, walk downstairs, and straight to the cabinet where I keep my coffee mugs. Some mugs are normal-sized, and some are bowls with handles, depending on the anticipated difficulty of the day ahead. I fill my chosen mug with filtered water from the fridge, and then I pour the water from my mug into my stovetop tea kettle and turn the burner on to the lowest setting.

That gives me enough time to feed my six cats, who escorted me down the stairs, put our rat terrier Daisy outside to do her doggy stuff, unload and load the dishwasher, let Daisy back inside, feed the outside cats (the order of these events is crucial, because Daisy prefers Special Kitty brand food for some reason), and maybe wipe my counters by the time my tea kettle starts whistling. I then make my coffee with an Aeropress, but to spare myself from having to describe what that is and how it works, let’s just imagine that I use a french press, which is roughly the same concept, but not as amazing.

After I make my coffee, with no cream or sugar, hot enough to burn away the pain of yesterday, I take it with me to the laundry room to fold laundry and put in another load. Since I have a one-track mind, I have not touched my coffee, and it is now cold, so the pain of yesterday remains. But now, I have done enough around the house to justify sitting down, and so I nuke my coffee for a minute and gulp it all down on the couch.

On the one morning of the week when my husband Kegan is off on the same day as me, Sunday, I get to drink hot coffee, because I can’t justify doing housework when I can sit and watch Law & Order with my husband.

Tuesday morning, Kegan asked if I had already put my water on the stove for coffee--I can’t remember the reason--and I told him 'no', and totally unprompted, he filled the stovetop teakettle completely with water and turned it up on high to make it boil faster. I still had to work my coffee contraption by myself, but I had coffee in five minutes that morning. I usually only put enough water in the kettle for one serving, but there was so much water left over in the kettle that I re-boiled it the next morning and used that, smiling to myself a little.

Even when he doesn’t know exactly how I want something done, I appreciate when he goes out of his way to do something for me or recalls a minor detail from a conversation. Over the winter, I would order a mocha latte with lunch, and when I came home late from work at midnight one night, I found a McDonald’s bag of food for me on the counter with a mocha latte. Even though it was hardly the time of day for coffee, I drank it anyway, and I loved Kegan for remembering that I liked them.

When I started my first full-time job, I was afraid of how it would impact our marriage. His parents divorced when he was young, and my mom stayed at home, so I felt that I didn’t have a healthy model for our marriage. When I let dinner get cold or have to leave unexpectedly for an assignment, I feel like a deadbeat husband from a sitcom--but I also remember that my husband works more than I do. He is sometimes a few minutes late, and I never hold it against him.

There is no way to predict the future, and the statistics on marriage scare me. From a standpoint of solely numbers, we have roughly a 50-50 chance of staying together. But numbers don’t account for the feeling of appreciation I get when Kegan goes out of his way for me out of care, or the excitement I feel when I see a bottle of wine he might like and imagine giving it to him. No matter what happens, I am grateful to have somebody who thinks about me as much as I think about him.