AusHun Week Day 6--Domestic
Now and again, people ask me why I fell in love with you. All married couples get that question at some point, I guess, althoughâand tell me if you havenât felt the same wayâI always thought we got it more than most. Our neighbors watch me come home soaking on a sunny day after a six-mile run and track mud from the forest trail onto the floors that youâve kept spotless all day. Friends come over so I can talk at them and tell stories for two hours, while you sit there almost silent and occasionally refill someoneâs wine glass for them. People are bound to be curious, is what Iâm getting at. They want to know why it works.
My answer is always the same. I fell in love with you because youâre terrible at dusting.
Itâs a little ridiculous, actually, especially since youâre willing to do just about anything else. I can hardly drop a crumb on the counter without you following behind me with a bottle of Windex (no, we will not get mice if I wait until Iâm done eating to clean it), and youâll get on my case about folding the bathroom towels wrong (no, they do not absolutely have to be folded longways). But you just wonât dust.
Youâre bad at it because you hate it, I know. You used to tell me it was just because you couldnât stand the scent of Pledge, and you said youâd do it more if you could get one of those old-fashioned feather-dusters with real goose down or whatever it is. Something about no lemony smell and how it was better for antique wood. Well, we got one of them, with a wooden handle and anythingânot cheap, mind youâand itâs currently hanging on a hook on the wall of the basement stairwell, looking good as new. Itâs probably the least dusty thing in that basement, come to think of it.
You hate dusting, first of all, because itâs a whole lot of walking around and standing and a surprising amount of arm work. Or, at least, the way you do it, it is. If youâre going to take on a cleaning projectâany projectâthereâs no way youâre going to do it half-assed. Youâll bring out the step-stool just so you can wipe off the tops of the ceiling fan blades. You just canât do it unless itâs going to be perfect, and half the time that means you canât do it at all.
I love you for that. Okay, I admit it, itâs funny how weak you are, and how sweat might as well be the fires of hell for you. Iâve been charmed by it for as long as I can remember. I mean it. I love that youâre soft. To me, everything about you is gentle, delicate, something to protect, no matter how much you try to seem untouchable. Do you know, I can still remember the first time I touched your hand? Not even the first time we held hands, just when we brushed fingers once. Donât believe me? It was at Antonioâs Christmas party, and weâd said maybe a couple sentences to each other the whole night, and we wouldnât talk much until the next get-together, but we both reached for the same desert and all I could think about is how Iâd never met a man with such smooth hands. Something told me right then. I knew you right then. I think Iâve always known you.
And I know that perfectionism of yours well too. The kind that makes you spend the extra hour out in the garden to make sure that the rose bushes are trimmed to the right shape. The kind that made you anxious when we started going out. Yes, I could tell, dear. Your face didnât always show it, but I could see your knee starting to bounce under the table every time the service at the restaurant was too slow, or you were nervous that I wouldnât like the food youâd cooked me at home. You care, love. Always, and so much.
I used to just offer to do the dusting myself, but no, of course, you had to be the one. You said I shouldnât trouble myself. Except you never got around to it, ever, no matter how much you promised you would, so Iâd finally get fed up and do it myself, and then youâd get mad because you had intended to do it, and then Iâd get mad because why didnât you just do it then, and Iâm sure by now youâre tired of me just rehashing how every one of our fights seem to go. What you donât know is thatâwhen I wasnât too upset, that isâIâd walk away from one of those arguments giggling to myself. I couldnât let you hear it, since you still had to think I was angry with you. But the truth is, darling, youâre so funny even when youâre being infuriating. Always need to be the gentleman, even when it ends up being a massive inconvenience.
Iâll tell you the real reason you never get any dusting done. Youâre not going to like itâand God help me if I ever breathe a word of it to our friendsâbut honestly, Roderich, I adore you so much for it. Itâs embarrassing, really, how it still makes me so head-over-heels, like a school girl getting smiled at by her crush. You thought we were past that stage, didnât you? I think, with you, Iâll always be in the honeymoon phase.
You canât dust because youâll get halfway through one room, get ready to start in on those mahogany bookcases that youâve been putting off for months, start taking things off the shelves, and be distracted by one of the photos youâve taken down. Or by the little hand-blown glass horse we brought back from our trip to Venice. Or the first-edition copy of that novel from the 1800s that youâd decided would be too expensive to get for yourself, but that I bought after youâd left the bookstore and surprised you with later. Or even the button Iâd lost from the back of my dress at the gala we were invited to last spring.
Iâll find you an hour and a half later, hardly any dusting done, going through these objects one by one. You carefully turn them over in your hands or scan the pictures like youâre trying to memorize just how we looked back then. Iâll chuckle and join you and before we know it, the sun is getting low and growing orange outside the window when it seemed that it was just noon. Weâll be on the plush carpet, surrounded by our memorabilia, remembering all weâve collected together all this time. Weâll pass the day in stories.
Maybe youâd hate dusting less if you didnât fill the shelves with so many old knick-knacks and keepsakes to gather dust, but oh, darling, I hope you never stop. Itâs not that youâre a packrat, not really. Youâre sentimental. You savor moments, all the moments weâve had together. I see it when you kiss my hand and let your eyes close and your lips linger there for longer than you have to. You cling to moments, and when theyâre over, you want things to remember them by, things to conjure up those good times for you. I love how you pay attention, I love how you collect, I love you, God, I love you.
For being shit at cleaning shelves, I love you. For all these things and more, dear, always, I love you.
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