"but it's the little things!"

Nothing like having your own words thrown back at you. Unintentionally, but still...

Every once in a while, Ed and I need a reset. I suspect most couples our age do, though maybe most dont bother, thinking that with time, you adjust to whatever the next stage of your life is like. Indeed, if asked, Ed would say that he needs no such thing, that we're fine taking each day as it presents itself. I beg to differ.

We had our built-in restart buttons all along of course. Beyond the trivial -- like saying good morning to each other in some lovely fashion, as suggested in the "35 things" article I linked for you two days back -- we went deeper. An example: we had breakfast. An important ritual for me, as you know -- in its careful preparation, in opting to get us off to a healthy start (oatmeal with loads of fruits), or sometimes to get us off on a pleasurable path (croissants!). We talked about the day before us. We took our time.

And let me just stay with the breakfast example (even though it's one of many): over the months, Ed's sleeping schedule shifted and I would have to wait way too long to get breakfast going. Or, I'd wake him and he'd oblige, stumbling down, half asleep, to nuzzle the cats and sit across the table. Increasingly, he wasn't really hungry for the oatmeal or croissants. Just the fruits. And then Covid came and we had a pause in contact and when we resumed, he slept late, didn't feel hungry for oatmeal, for croissants, for fruit, for anything. When he came down (late!), he'd be physically present and that's about it. And so today I had to ask myself -- what's the point?

Alone, I put on music or NPR podcasts. I take stock. I eat when I want to -- like before 10 a.m. But the easing and flexing of this ritual is not as important as the question that comes up for me: what have we done to replace it?

Giving up a ritual is pricey. The loss of effort is pricey. You become two ships, sailing in the same ocean, but with separate crews and captains. Not totally inattentive, of course. You're vaguely aware of what the other ship is doing because you don't want to crash into each other, and you want to wind up in the same place at the end of the day or week or life, but your overlap, though fundamental at some deeper level, on a daily basis, is actually pretty trivial.

This is what I told him when he did come down in the morning. His answer? But we do everything together! 

Say what? Can I have a concrete example? 

We're in each others presence all day long!

Yes. How comfortable. Bonded emotionally, leading intellectually separate lives. Which is, I suppose, natural for two people who have such different interests. Nothing new there. But this is why we need rituals and resets.

But why? -- he asks. You know I just love the little things!

Ha! Right back at me!

 

Since it is going to be beastly cold for the next three days, we absolutely feel compelled to take a walk today. In our favorite park. The wind is already picking up and the temps are dropping as we speak. The Siberian blast coming at us tonight is hailed as the coldest in forty years. Don't I know that time, forty years back! It was January, the dates identical to ours now. I was about to give birth to our second child. And it was cold! To her benefit I think: my delivery doc, the same one who had helped deliver my older girl, decided to come in that day because, as he said it -- I cant do anything else on such a cold day. In those days, you felt like you actually had your doc by your side (rather than whoever fate handed you at critical junctures of your life). And when we left the hospital a few days later it was still cold! Wind chills like you wouldn't believe. You had to feel grateful: 100 years earlier, even if you had a well heated home, you had no way of getting there without experiencing that wind. 

Our walk today was crisp! But nice.

I talk through resets using a lot of words, Ed does them with gestures. Sooooo different, in soooo many ways and yet, here we are, chugging along. With so much love.