Tag: relationships

The Goatee Dream

First, there was a sex dream. The neighbor’s cat was crying at the door and broke that spell. After I let her in (and provided a meal), I used the loo. Back to bed, I thought about the dream and hoped it would return (as it was comforting and pleasant).

It didn’t. In its stead came the beard dream. Standing in front of a mirror, I prepared to trim my goatee and ‘stache. What I saw horrified me; the goatee was massively overgrown.

I began trying to trim it while wondering how it’d come to look so bad with collateral thoughts of, had something happen to me, did it always look so horrid, and geez, why didn’t anyone say anything to me?

My wife was in the dream’s background, talking, giving me the impression that, “We needed to leave soon.” Don’t know to where. I responded that I was almost ready (not true), but that I just had to trim my goatee.

I saw my goatee had grown to double bumps hanging down, which didn’t do anything for my face. I looked like Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but more withered and grayer. Naturally, I concluded, trim them. Somehow, trimming them worsened their appearance. Recoiling with fresh horror, I decided that it all looked so bad that the only thing that I could do is shave the goatee off entirely. Trying, though, I ended up revealing a bloody wound that the beard concealed.

What happened? Had I cut myself? Meanwhile, my wife was calling for me to hurry and my beard had darkened and grown across my lower face.

That’s where the dream ended.

Yeah, classic self-image dream about my identity, isn’t it?

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Easy

“Do I have a flat head?” he asked.

The question was from the proverbial blue left field. It certainly had naught to do with what was going on (which was going to the store) (for groceries) (snacks, if they were honest) (he was driving), or what they’d been talking about (movies) (Parasite and Uncut Gems).

“No,” she said. “You have a perfect head. It’s a perfect shape and size. I’ve always admired the shape of your head.”

He nodded, then said something about worrying about it, which was why he was combing his hair differently (she hadn’t noticed). She half-listened, instead thinking how easy it’d been for her to lie.

But that’s what was learned, during forty years of keeping a marriage alive.

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Oh

oh, you pain me

and you give me joy

and, oh, you make me so happy that I can’t believe my luck

oh, you make me so angry that I could spit nails

and oh so sad that I cry hot tears in the car

and have secret conversations with you in my head

(that’s what makes them secret)

oh, your beauty and intelligence amazes me

and your kindness and sweetness inspires me

and no one could ever have a better friend

but oh, your obstinance and rigidity frustrates me

and oh, how your complaints wear me out

and your drinking and habits enervate me

which shows the truth:

love can’t be spelled without oh

 

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

I encountered a friend on the street. He was coming out of a store and I was walking by. Eighty years old, his wife is two years younger. She’s having medical issues.

Married for fifty years, his only spouse, he seemed like he was going through the process of thinking about life without her. They’ve downsized their home twice in the last eight years, but her mobility is going, as is her vision and her mental acuity. In his words, “It all seems to be falling apart for her.”

Sad, and an often heard story. I commiserated with him, but what struck me was his comments about being nothing without her. He said, in his thinking, everything that he’d done after getting his college degree was about her, and then their family that they created, and their life together. It was his constant motivation.

After we parted and I thought more about what he’d said, “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence (1995) slipped into the stream, a song about being nothing without another.

 

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Floofmencement

Floofmencement (floofinition) – An act, instance, or time of beginning an experience with, or engaging with, an animal.

In use: “With many people, floofmencement began with looking into an animal’s eyes. From in there, people grasped love, pain, sadness, hope, among other emotions, and took it on themselves to be with and help this creature.”

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Befloofed

Befloofed (floofinition) – The animal to whom one is completely and solely committed in a monofloof relationship.

In use: “She would’ve enjoyed having another rescue cat in her home, even two more, but Flash made it clear that they were befloofed and wasn’t interested in an open relationship with any other animals, or people.”

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She Thinks

Sitting with friends, laughing while nibbling a scone (blackberry, overbaked, it doesn’t taste that good, and she’s not that hungry, but she bought it because the rest insisted, “Get something,”), celebrating (after the fact) a friend’s birthday, an epiphany strikes her.

Inspired by Barbara’s recounting of her husband’s recent illnesses (he’d gone through surgery but developed an infection), Diana and Belle are speaking about their late husbands. Both died of heart attacks in their mid-sixties.

She thinks about her husband, two years older than her (and in his mid-sixties). Coughing for days, he’d been listless, and getting worse, it seems. He’d always been a health freak — didn’t and doesn’t drink except for an occasional social beverage when they’re out (which she usually finishes for him), and a pescatarian for over forty years (no, almost fifty years, to be more accurate, always important to her). He runs five miles a day four days a week, cycles everywhere, and rows with a club several times per month, activities that he’d needed to curtail when he’d become ill. A cup of coffee a day, he always said with a wink and a grin, is his vice. Yet, he seemed to be getting sicker.

His illness really started over two years before. He’d seen doctors, and everything was great. (“They tell me that I have the arteries of a teenager.) This is when her epiphany is delivered, a thought so striking that it sucks the air out of the room and her lungs. The voices fade. Dizziness topples her.

Others say suddenly, leaning in, touching her hands and shoulders, concern on their faces, “Are you okay?”

She smiles. “Yes, fine, what?” She shakes her head. “I just got distracted. I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”

They buy it after a few seconds. When the attention leaves her, she thinks, is her husband slowly killing himself to keep her from being happy?

It’s audacious and ridiculous, but she thinks, it’s keeping with his character. He’s always been something of a passive aggressive, secret saboteur. His mother, sisters, and cousin had told her stories about how he’d undermined friendships (and an engagement). He was always sneaky when he did it. He’d been the same at work throughout his career, a liar, essentially, but very clever about it, damaging relationships when he did, but always as an innocent, and almost always believed.

Now, he’d retired. No family lived nearby. He has few close friends (were any of them close to him?). Could he have turned his attention to his relationship with her?

She thinks, how? (He could be poisoning himself.) Why? (Because that’s who — what — he is.) She thinks, I have no proof. It’s insane for her to even consider it. Yet, the idea remains moored in her thoughts. She thinks with growing shock as the group breaks up and leaves the coffee shop, it’s possible.

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Strategy

She was home. 

He moved into the living room and his little electric heater. He preferred warm air. She (she claimed) liked it ‘normal’. It exasperated the hell out of him. Wasn’t like he was choosing to prefer hot. His need for heat (he’d probably never see that on a movie poster) was derived from injuries, illnesses, and diseases. Life demanded a harsh toll from him.

Hurrying to the heater, he turned it up from low to med. Then, with silent swiftness, he settled into his recliner, grabbed his book, and pretended like her arrival was a surprise.

“Oh, you’re home.”

“Yes.” She talked about things going on outside as she removed her coat. Then, as he turned away, he watched her reflection in the television screen out of the corner of his eye. Soon as she saw his back was turned, she took two long fast steps to the heater and bent over it. A soft click followed.

She bustled away as he turned back. Smiling to himself, he glanced at the heater. On low, just as he preferred.

A happy marriage sometimes required a little guile.

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The Rock

“Follow me.” She took the movers into the backyard. It’d been a last minute decision but was appropriate.

A foot taller than her, they followed her out into the immaculate backyard. Winter had drained its color and autumn had jerked the leaves from the trees but a sense of comfort embraced her as she wrapped her sweater around her shoulders, glanced up at the milky sun, and limped across the grass.

A innocuous rock about a foot high and a foot wide rested in one corner in sunshine by a patch of dirt. She pointed at it. “This rock. I want this rock to go, too.”

The movers, without exchanging looks, said, “Yes, ma’am.” The three encircled the rock and studied it. She said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Turning, she strode back into the house, casting eyes over the cottage. She and her husband had bought it twenty-one years before, ten years after they’d retired, coming up here for a more relaxed life. Then came the cat, a tiny tabby mewing on her porch as rain poured outside. The husband had died later that year. The cat, though, had lasted for twenty-one. The rock had been the cat’s favorite sitting place in the back. Sunshine always found the rock, and Pebble, named for her petite size, always found the rock.

She could leave the house – had to, really, because small as it was, it was too much for her  now – but she wouldn’t leave the rock. The cat was gone, but she’d always have the rock. And who knows? Maybe in the new place, she’d put the rock on the tiny balcony and perhaps find a new feline companion.

Or maybe it’d find her, as Pebble had.

It would be nice to have another rock in her life.

NOTE: Someone posted a photo of a mover carrying a large, unpretentious rock into an apartment. Others wondered why someone was moving a rock into an apartment.

So did I.

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