If you came over today

If you came to our house right now, early on a Saturday afternoon, August 8, 2015; you would find me but no Tanga Bea. You and I could sit and talk in our living room, after I picked up the clean clothes we have yet to put away, telling you: “It’s because our damn house has virtually no closet space.” I would offer you a cup of tea, but you’d say you don’t drink tea. I’d say, well I would offer you some coffee, but Tanga and I don’t drink it, so we don’t have any on hand right now. You would say that’s okay, but probably start thinking how strange it is that neither of us drink coffee.

You’d probably also notice we don’t have cats or dogs and there’s no TV in our living room. Before either of us brought the subject of - "how the hell do we spend our time then" - up, I would probably start telling you how we usually sit around reading on our phones, or that and we look at Facebook or videos on youtube. In their seasons, we watch a lot of college basketball and some baseball, but that is about the only thing that ever comes on our TVs. "We have one in our bedroom and one upstairs in the family room."

I would not likely take you on a grand tour of the house. It’s old to me now and it's been a long time since we thought of it as a “showplace.”

We would sit in silence a while and then you might see the picture laying on the table between the love seat and the wall and I would say: “That’s our daughter, Stephanie. She’s our only one.” I might offer too: “The picture is laying there because we had termites and the lady who came in to check for them took it down and found holes in the wall where it had been hanging and we have just not put it back up yet, sort of waiting on the wall to be repaired, which is waiting on us repainting the living room, which is waiting on our handy friends to visit Labor Day, so they can do the job for us.” And I would tell you how it cost fifteen hundred dollars to exterminate the termites and we would both allow as to how we had gone into the wrong line of work if we really wanted to make money.

Crickets.

“You want a drink of water?” I would ask.

“No, I’m good,” you’d say.

Then I might start in about our - Tanga's and mine- distant past, how we were youth directors at two churches early on and how we had met in college before that and how we both had grown up poor…and I would probably talk until your eyes glazed over and then I might say: “Tanga will be home around four o’clock.” I would then likely explain how unfairly work was treating her these days, not giving her enough assistance in her job, to the point she had to work occasional Saturdays, when the usual person was sick or something.

I would tell you about going to work with Tanga this past week and how it was: “A real eye opener.” I would say how Tanga was like a firefighter, constantly putting out little fires. We would agree with smiles, it was probably better to put out small fires rather than big fires. Ha, we might both add.

I would say this past Thursday had been our thirty-eighth wedding anniversary, waiting just briefly for you to reply with something like: “Really, you don’t look old enough to have been married that long.” But then, when you did not say that, we would move on.

I might say how the only thing that seemed to make it possible for Tanga to get through her day was to ever so often get a phone call or visit from one of the people she confided in, so they could have a good laugh at the absurdity of the place. It would be possible to tell, I would say, that what they were really doing was figuring out how to stay sane together, rather than trying to get done whatever it was they were supposed to be getting done together. I would notice how you would have lost interest at my philosophizing about "The meaning of Tanga's work" and thus another subject would have run its course.

We would sit in silence a little while longer and then I might launch into how I used to be a lot busier at work and that in fact, I had gone through three eras thus far in my career and was currently between eras. The first era had been the early years as a junior faculty member in North Carolina, that lasted from 1988 – 1994. I would then talk about the second era that went from 1994 through 2003. That era was the one where I coordinated the MBA program at our university.

The third era, I would explain, had left me a little bitter, saying how it had run from 2004 into the middle of 2012. This was the time when I had been responsible for civic engagement activities on our campus. The funding for that effort had been cut and so we had not continued it. That is why, I would say: "I am currently looking for the last era. I might say I hope it has something to do with writing," as if it were not up to me what it had to do with.

I might listen to you talk about your life for a little while and then I yawn and say something, like – after checking the time on my phone- Tanga will be here soon. "Would you like to go out and eat when she gets here?"

If you said yes, I would go into how Tanga and I have a little difficulty finding places to eat since I am vegan.

You would joke that you would be on Tanga’s side and so it would be two on one for where we went. When she got home, you two would greet after all these months of not seeing each other and I would become, once again, the spectator.

We would most likely wind up at a steak house and I would get a bake potato and salad with the oil and vinegar dressing on the side. The lettuce would be a golden brown and the potato would have been baked before daylight and reheated in the microwave.

But at least I would have done my part, babysit you until Tanga got home and we could go out to a restaurant and I could listen to the two of you talk about life - normal stuff, of kids, of repeated attempts to lose weight, of knowing how it hurts to lose a parent, of what it is like to have the boss from hell, to be afraid of heights, to not be able to wait until retirement so you can finally take it easy.

I would pick at my potato and salad, drink my ice water with lemon and marvel at how sane you both are, in the middle of all the craziness in this world.