It was a magnificent afternoon.
I was freed early from work for a meeting on Mainside with the eternally frustrating IPAC, which is the Installation Personnel Administration Center and commonly experienced as a particular circle of hell in which one's dearest personal information is subjected to the worst bureaucratic treatment by apathetic Marines with no connection to you or your unit, and therefore no motivation or mutually shared esprit to look after you, and where consequently your pay, or orders, or personnel file are treated as nasty intrusive garbage and whose maintenance is a barely tolerable chore.
Fortunately there is a civilian who works there, soft-spoken and incongruously muscular, whose professional sneer conceals a real desire to help out the poor patients who dare enter that sanctuary.
A short stop later to receive a 'counseling' on my pending move, where I was warned in no uncertain terms that I might expect out-of-pocket expenses during my move to Wisconsin, since my home of record is in Bellevue, Washington, and told severely that this was the last move at government expense that I would ever have, which is sort of the point of leaving this Marine Corps anyway, isn't it?
But nevertheless I walked out of there with the promise of movers calling shortly to arrange a date for picking up my stuff at the unusual hour of 2:35 in the afternoon (1435 to those military types). And behold! the sun was shining with the richness of spring down on the wintry world, where the temperature grudgingly lifted itself up above 40 degrees and an inexplicable, delightfully warm breeze cooed among the shriveled boughs.
I drove home on roads crowded, but with little slowing. I listened to some re-discovered and favorite music, happily singing along (a little off-key, as is my wont) and letting the sentiments of the songs wash over me. I and greeted my ecstatic dogs in a sunlit house, for the first time I can remember (though I know objectively it's happened before). A happy mood was upon me, a mood which promised something great. A moment of pure happiness--especially because I had something to accomplish, and so I cheerfully bent to work on a self-imposed 'honey-do' list.
I should note here that my wife is wonderfully competent, and asks very little of me around the house. She will happily paint walls over and over again until she finds the perfect palette of complimenting colors; she tidies up repeatedly after our daughter (and, shamefully, me on occasion) with a ready hand; she steams and scrubs the floors and changes light bulbs and does laundry and generally applies all the ingenuity and dedication she brought so successfully to Television Production to our home. She also lovingly rears our daughter and freelance writes on the side, I might add. Only a very few tasks are left to me--take out the garbage (which she does as well), perhaps, and remove the dead mice from our basement. You might say I am not strictly necessary in a domestic sense.
But as she is currently doing all of that stuff in our wonderful NEW house in Wisconsin, preparing it with her customary industry for our arrival after the move I have just arranged, there are a few things I can do for her. And while such tasks may not be the 'something great' that our collective consciousness has in mind on a sunny day, well, I can say that they are something much greater than I ever did before her. My wife, see, loves a clean house. And I can really give her that today. It is wonderful to clean crusted dog excrement off the odd rug, clean dead mice and their excrement out of the basement, run a few loads of laundry, scrub the floors of the sticky remains of toddler snacks, and air out the house. It's a honey-do list I made, for her. A way to give back to her what she gives to me every day. It's small, but joyful, and it is the metaphorical cherry on top of this day. I can't wait for her to see everything--not so she will comment (though she inevitably will, and with loving gratitude), but so she'll enjoy it. So she'll be able to relax when she arrives and not feel the need to clean, or tidy, or avert her attention from a pressing mess that's just too hard to clean with a curious toddler running around.
Later that evening I pay an all-too-rare visit to the Sacrament in my church. Incense sits heavily upon the pews with the other worshippers, all conspicuously ordinary yet distinct, comfortably anonymous in the dimness and their private prayers. Their normality emphasizes their focus on the monstrance on the altar, and I slide almost effortlessly into a spiritual communion that I can never seem to achieve anywhere else.
Then in the quiet warmth of our house, I make myself dinner. I'm a bachelor with very specific tastes on a night like this, so I indulge not in ramen or a frozen pizza but in eggs, bacon, and cereal. There are tidbits for the dogs, who happily interrupt naps to come and politely beg (mostly by staring longingly with ever the slightest look of accusation at my feast), but when I finally pull away from my book and clean my dishes, I'm struck by how odd it feels without her.
It feels odd because I should be content. Food, comfort, a good book, a feeling spiritual wellness, a sense of accomplishment--I have all I should ever need for happiness. But my heart is restless. My inner St. Augustine rears his head. I know for whom I cry. It is her. My companion. Her sudden smile, her startling plunges into meaningful conversation, her thoughts on the day, the news, the kid, the food, the everything. All that I achieved this day is meaningless except for the clean rugs slowly steaming on the living room floor, with the thermostat set to eighty degrees, and the clean basement for laundry.
And I want to be with her.
I want to drop this magnificent day and barrel into the single-digit, blustery winter of Wisconsin, just to order her a glass of chardonnay at the nearest supper club (or dive bar), to laugh about the singular pleasure of seat-heaters in the car which somehow manage to warm you deeply even while most of your body shivers, to pick out the most unlikeable person in the bar and befriend them instantly (well, she does that. I just tag along).
But she is with a friend tonight, a rare opportunity to see a friend when they are both in the Midwest at the same time. She'd never want me absent, never consider me a third wheel, but I'm secretly glad she has this night to enjoy free from the needs of our new home, or our old home, or anything else. So that she can have something like my afternoon, hopefully with nothing to accomplish but the gladness that comes with renewing an old friendship.
And I will happily keep the light on here, literally and metaphorically. And hope she notices the basement when she gets home.
