Conquering Vertigo

Counting neuroses

I confess I'm an unconscious counter.
I arrive at the top of a staircase and announce -- seemingly apropos of nothing -- "22!"

I'm as surprised as you are. I thought I was talking to you, or thinking about the State Of The World Today or "Do we have enough garlic cloves in the house?"

But somewhere in my soul, where the foot bone connects to the counting bone, I was communing with the steps.

My husband, on the other hand, is a conscious counter. An unrepentent conscious counter. He chose the flatware in our wedding registry because he loved the way all the different pieces hung in perfect proportions on the cool silver thing. Frankly, I liked it too, but I was unaware of the darker portents to come.

Now that we're married and keeping house together, I've discovered he Counts Things, much as does Kanga in the Pooh adventures. I'll hear him down in the kitchen, cosseting the pasta boxes, and then suddenly he'll walk into our bedroom, fix me with a gimlet gaze and say, "One of the spoons is missing."

Often, something's not in its place because I'm using it.
Occasionally, something's not in its place because I left it who knows where. I'm the woman who has placed car keys and library books in the fridge, simply because they were unnoticed in my hands while putting up the groceries. I confess this frailty willingly and with a heart open to change.

But sometimes, and O! the glory of it, something's not in its place because King Richard the Counter has left it somewhere.

I come to you tonight, full of a small triumph, which are often the best kinds.

The Man, like a terrier with a bone, has been worrying around the house about a missing glass. A large-ish, 16-ounce drinking glass, which lives with its seven brothers on the second shelf of the upper cabinet immediately to the right of the sink. It's been missing for more than a week, with plans in place to be featured on a milk carton.

At various times of the day and night, in various rooms of the house and locations in The City, Richard will mutter accusingly, "That glass still hasn't shown up."

There has been no need to articulate my blame in this matter. Of course I'm responsible for the missing glass. God and God alone knows what I might have done with it, and where I might have left it. Silly woman, she probably put the glass in the recycling bin, or sent it off with the returned library books.

Picture the scene then, when he came to me last night.
I'm sitting on the bed, folding some laundry.
He appears in the open bedroom door frame, one hand behind his back, leaning half-in and half-out.

An inscrutable look is on his face.
"How much do you love me?" he asks.

Thinking he's serious and caught quite off-guard (I was folding his boxers), one hand goes towards my breastbone as I say, "Darling, more than I can say."

He steps fully into the room and silently reveals the hidden hand, clasping the missing glass. It had been hiding on the top shelf of his closet, behind some sweaters, where he had inadvertently left it.

He's been very good to me today.

posted by Woman In Love @ 8:03 PM