Of Toenails and Tires

I looked up “what is love” in order to hopefully find pithy quotes to start this piece[1], and I found a few, but not the kind I was looking for, so I’ll just make one up, paraphrasing Charles Schulz, the Peanuts guy: “Love is a Warm Puppy.” He actually said, “Happiness is a Warm Puppy” and, having had a warm puppy[2] sleeping on my feet for most of the past eight years, I’d have to say that both happiness and love is a warm puppy.

I’ve been married since the year Prince told us to party like it was.[3] I met my husband in December of 1995, and we’ve been together ever since. Since I’m fifty-six years old now, that means that he’s been a part of substantially more than half my life.

I love him, did then, do now, but he’s not a warm puppy.

There was a time when I thought he was dreamy. He’s tall and has piercing blue eyes, which he’s managed to pass on to both of our children. He has beautiful curly hair which was pepper and salt when we met and is now all silver snowdrift. He was super cool back in the day—it was his flight suit which first caught my attention.  He was the police helicopter pilot, a profession which in coolness points ranks just below astronaut and fighter pilot. Now he’s a retired guy who prowls around my house wearing the same t-shirt for days on end and gets all excited about caterpillars and dogwood seedlings. He falls asleep if he sits down for more than ten minutes.

People change as they age.

That’s okay, I’m not the same person I was back then either. I could do a cartwheel back then. It hurts my back now to watch other people do cartwheels. I worry they’ll break their necks.

Mike has more back problems than me. He’s got four vertebrae fused together surgically and other issues besides. As a result, he’s not very bendy, and there are some basic tasks he can’t do without a lot of grunting and cussing.

As his wife, as the person who loves him most, it’s my job to make sure his life is good. I take that back. It’s not my job so much as my goal. When you love people, you want them to be happy. You want their lives to be easier. So when I see him struggling, I want to help.

As a result, I find myself doing things like cutting his toenails. Am I a foot gal? No, I am not. Do I take pleasure in cutting his old man horny toenails? No, I do not. Do I encourage him to go to the nail salon and pay a professional? Yes, I do.[4] Do I wash my hands to the tune of happy birthday (twice) when I am done with soapy water as hot as I can stand it? Yes, I do.

But let me tell you this: it is an act of love. More than a dozen roses or a diamond necklace or a long romantic speech. Words are cheap. Flowers die. You can buy jewelry at the mall. What you cannot do is buy someone who sees you having trouble with something and seeks to alleviate that trouble with no other motive than affection.

Every time I drive somewhere more than an hour away, my husband holds me up because he’s got to check my tire pressure and my oil. It drives me bonkers because he cannot think to do this until the second I am trying to leave.  But I’d rather him drive me bonkers than just let me leave because I know that he has visions of me blowing a tire on the highway or my engine seizing because of something preventable that he could have done something about and he could never live with that.

That’s love, my friends. Toenails and tires. And warm puppies.

 

[1] Yes, I do sometimes do research for these pieces, but not if it requires more than a Google search.

[2] Lincoln, the world’s greatest rescue mutt.

[3] 1999.

[4] Will he go to the salon and pay a professional? No he will not.

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