Inside the Bubble

"You doing okay, buddy?"

After one minute on the phone, Husband knows something is wrong. He claims he can’t read my mind, but the Marriage Mind Meld makes him dangerous enough.

The answer to his question, “no,” lacks all evidence to support it. Nobody died. Nothing went wrong at work. There was no call from home with drama. I am not hurt, or sick, or crying, or worried. But I’m not okay.

Nothing’s wrong. But something’s not right.

Numbness crept back in where I thought I had beaten it back. I found myself in that dark bubble, where time moves slower, food tastes muted, and all ties between me and the world dissolves. My existence distilled down to the couch and a subscription to Hulu.

I’m letting Husband down. I’m letting myself down. Vaguely, I worry about falling into old habits. In the end, though, I don’t care enough to do anything.

You doing okay, buddy?

"No. Yes...I don't know." It comes out petulant, like a seven-year-old girl stamping her Mary Janes.

"Okay. We'll talk when I get home. Do you need anything?" Like what? A new brain? A fucking time machine? Food? I can’t be bothered.

Then Husband is walking into the dark house, finding me on the couch, dimly illuminated by the glow of the television screen. He offers me his hand and pulls me up. I stand, immediately folded into a hug.

"Scientists say that hugging releases dopamine. Or endorphins. Let’s say endopamines. They make you happy, but you need twenty seconds for the hug to work.”

“One Mississippi…two Mississippi…three Mississippi…” he whispers in my ear.

I sink into him. We stay like that, him supporting me and counting softly, for a full twenty Mississippis. Finally, he pulls away, kisses me on the forehead, and sits us down on the couch.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?”

No judgment. No admonishment. No you-should-do-thises. Instead, he sits and listens. I tell him the everything and the nothing of it all. He says, “Whatever this is—if it’s work, if it’s me, whatever—we’ll figure it out.” Eyes brimming with tears, not trusting myself with any more words, I nod, then sink my head down onto his chest.

He loves me. So much.

He’s not here to charge in and chase anything away, or even shine a light on it. Depression, the sneaky bastard, doesn’t work like that, and he knows it. Rather than stand outside the boundaries of that darkness, taking shots at it, he sneaks inside the bubble with me. He sits. He takes it in. He’s here.

He shares it all with me.

Already, I feel lighter for it.

Danny

Once every ten months or so, we undergo a major condo reorganization project. Maybe, the reasoning goes, if we just use our space more efficiently, if we just rearrange this furniture, buy this shelf, we’ll feel like we have more room than we do. The planning phases of these projects all end in the same way: a trip to Ikea for organizational supplies.

Our latest endeavor, Project Kitchen Cabinets, brought us to a new place: The Container Store. Armed with schematic drawings and measurements, we were on a mission. Our mission: eradicate free-wheeling, pot-lid ridden, it’s-always-in-the-back cabinet conditions that often led to Angry Megan stomping around the kitchen and cursing.

I knew exactly what I was looking for: those platforms on wheely tracks that are installed on the bottom of a cabinet shelf. Charles didn’t know what I was talking about; so, naturally, he thought they didn’t exist. But, he decided to humor me and look for them in The Container Store. I believe the reasoning was that once I discovered that the magical organization tool was all in my head, we would be able to find something to meet our needs in this mecca of all things organization.

Only they did exist. Once we walked in the store, it wasn’t too long before someone asked if they could help us. I explained what we were looking for and we were directed to an entire aisle in the store full of nothing but the sliding cabinet organizers. To my credit, I didn’t gloat much beyond the indignant exclamation of, “I told you!”

We started in on deciding which of the options before us to buy. And then. Then. We spotted it. A shiny chrome organizer to hold nothing more or less than all of your pot lids, in ascending size order. The curves of this organizer gleamed under the fluorescent lights of the store. When we pulled on the front, it rolled smoothly and stealthily on its tracks. It was a thing of beauty. There were not two ways about it. I was in love.

Then, on the other side of the aisle, Charles found an alternative to the chrome organizer called the Lid Maid. This plastic system for organizing lids was narrower, so would possibly be more versatile in its cabinet placement. The big advantage, which appealed greatly to Charles’s man-logic, was the fact that it was about one third the price of the beautiful chrome organizer. But, it was made of dirty-white plastic. When you pulled on it, it moved haltingly and squeaked. Charles was pushing the Lid Maid option in its cheap plastic glory.

Was he kidding?

It was during this argument (“Function over form, Megan!” “But it squeaks!”) that Danny found us. Danny, the Container Store employee who may have been better served skipping over us in favor of customers with a little less baggage. Instead, he heard the distress call of a stalemate between mates.

“Can I help you two with anything?”

Could anyone help us?

With the last flicker of hope we had for our lives together, and a happy medium in the kitchen, we explained what we were trying to do.

Danny, in turn, listened to both sides of our lid organizer argument. “That certainly is the more economical option,” he agreed with Charles. “It should hold just as many lids, and it takes up almost no space.”

Then he found my side, “You know, you’re right. It does squeak. I guess that could be a little like fingernails down a chalkboard.”

In a flash of inspiration, Danny brought us to the aisle full of racks. Perhaps a compromise could be met? We could mount a rack on the wall to hold our lids. After all, how many lids could we have? Sweet, naïve Danny. If only he knew that we mysteriously have more lids than pots.

We debated the merits of these lid-storage alternatives, only to find we were firmly rooted in one of those first two alternatives: the Lid Maid, or the right choice.

Finally, Danny, our dear friend, stood by with a bemused smile as he witnessed our back and forth. After a well-placed argument on my part, “Who, exactly, spends more time cooking in the kitchen?” we arrived (begrudgingly, for one of us) at an agreement. We were taking home the gleaming chrome. (Megan: 1, Lid Maid: 0)

Danny breathed a sigh of relief as the lid organizer went into the cart, and we turned our attention to the remaining sliding organizers to fill out the cabinets. Why did I feel that we owed Danny a drink?

When in the throes of shopping that affects both of us, both Charles and I can each get very passionate and very attached to our own ideas. We honestly consider each other’s point of view, and we come to the same conclusion: our own idea is better than the other guy’s. Unless a magical compromise option comes into play, we can go back and forth on what each one of us is convinced is the only real option. Danny helped us focus, gave legitimacy to both our arguments, and kept things light and friendly.

He had been through the wringer with us, and had somehow managed to garner peace.

Here’s to you, Danny!

Marriage Mind Meld

The Mind Meld is a cognitive condition that affects more than just married couples. The root cause of this condition is significant amounts of time spent in close proximity with someone else. Symptoms include, but are not limited to the ability to complete each others’ sentences, near superpower abilities when playing Pictionary, or picking up the phone only to find the other person is calling you at the exact moment you intended to call him or her.

The Mind Meld can seem like a superhuman power. From a close connection with someone else grows an enhanced understanding of another person, his or her life experiences, and how that person thinks. A short-handed communication is born. Complete sentences aren’t always necessary to convey a point. Sometimes you don’t even need words.

What science has not yet proven about the Mind Meld is whether two people in the Meld just really understand the way the other one thinks, or whether they grow to think similarly to one another over time. Perhaps it’s both.

I have experienced such a condition with roommates. In a game of Taboo, my college roommate was able to elicit the response, “a rainbow!” from me by saying, “something you have never seen…” As one of the other players in this game pointed out, this clue could refer to any number of things I hadn’t seen, such as lions mating in the wild or Bono in concert. But I knew it was a rainbow because of the Mind Meld.

Charles and I have been Melded for years now, long before the wedding took place. When we team up for a game of Cranium, we are virtually unstoppable, unless in the presence of other strongly Mind-Melded couples. I know which grunt means he’s not satisfied with the answer to a question he received, and he knows when my sighs mean something more than just a sigh. Sometimes our very silence speaks volumes.

As wonderful a gift as the Mind Meld can be, it can go awry. Take yesterday, for example. Charles and I have been planning to attend the Irish American Heritage Festival ever since we learned that Eileen Ivers would be giving a concert there. However, we didn’t buy the tickets immediately. It was understood by both of us that we would cross that bridge after our trip to St. Louis at the end of June.

We’ve been back from our trip for a little over a week now, falling back into our daily routines. Yesterday, we decided to take action about the tickets. The deadline was coming up, after which ticket prices would double. I placed the order online while Charles was napping at home, deciding I should act on it while I was thinking about it. Charles placed the order after he woke up, after shooting an IM message that I didn’t immediately see. When I turned around and saw his message, I snatched up the phone to stop the inevitable disaster. He answered just as he hit the sent button to make the purchase.

The moral of our story is this: if you or anyone you know would like to attend the Irish American Heritage Festival this weekend, please let us know! We have tickets!

Death in a saucebowl.

My ladylove and I have a pretty equitable system for chores. Not codified on paper anywhere, the rules have sort of evolved naturally over time. I'll even jump on the "green" fad and say it evolved "organically." How's that for using some lemming-like vernacular?

Since my wife's mutant power manifests in the form of Meganvision, a highly defined ability to see dust particles left behind by my mere mortal sweeping attempts, she gets to sweep. I generously fell on the garbage Seppuku sword since I prefer she not be hauling rotting garbage down 3 flights at night to a dumpster in an ill-lit city alley. We each wash our own clothes, asking nicely if we need to fill out a load if the other has some apparel they'd like to hitch a ride to cleantown. Cleaning the tub even has a ritual. I auger out the occasional hairball that breeds in the tub drain while she'll occasionally take care of the special cleaning our whirlpool tub requires. Overall our chore existence is pretty amicable. Now and again, however, evil strikes in the form of saucebowls.

Cleaning dishes has been the only area where we still have a back and forth relationship on who gets what and when. Generally we each keep up with loading our items into the dishwasher and running it. The real death to our matrimonial harmony comes when the saucebowls arrive. First you might see one or two. The lady will have some veggie potstickers and fill a side ramekin with some soy or other asiany-type sauce. I will maybe have some leftover chicken tenders and slam some BBQ sauce in a dipping bowl. Regardless of who starts the trend, we get overwhelmed by saucebowls. The things breed. Soon the sink has become a bio-weapons playground full of stagnant saucebowls all in varying stage of superflu petri-dish creation. Then the denial begins.

"I did dishes last."

"No, I did dishes last when I washed the thing near the thing after we went out to see the thing, remember?"

The argument starts off weak, then a few more days of fungal growth occurs in the dishes. Our yuck-pools have, by now, developed a latent early-evolutionary sentience and have begun plans for condo conquest. I'm not entirely certain if spores haven't been released into the air from the growths occuring in the sink, tainting our abilities to rationally just DO the damn dishes. Regardless of the cause, we begin to start targeting each other. Our dog becomes the intermediary for discussion as we refuse to directly tell the other person to do the dishes.

"Roxy, tell mommy it stinks in here from her stagnant saucebowls of death," I'll advise the dog.

"Roxy, tell daddy nothing smells worse than what comes out of his ass every 20 seconds," she'll inform the dog.

Eventually something snaps. Maybe the dog's boredom of our inanity does it. She'll go lick the floor somewhere more interesting. Maybe it's the fact that the other person disappears for a bit (usually the one who snaps does so when the other is working). Maybe God is a jester who has decided to get back to a normal show. Eventually one of us does the dishes. Someday, however, I know in my soul, the death of our marriage could lie in a saucebowl. This is why I'm plotting to accidentally drop all our saucebowls. It's for our love, honey!