Saturday, July 22, 2006
making love in the shower
I must say right up front, this post is not going to live up to its title. At least not in the prurient sense. Sorry.
Several years ago when I was feeling rather low and in need of affirmation I growled at my rather non-expressive wife, “How come you never say, ‘I love you?’”
She responded that it’s the way she was raised. Never once has either of her parents expressed their love for each other or for any of their kids in words. As a result, she just doesn’t think in terms of expressing herself that way. Period.
She explained, however, that her mother before her, and now she, expresses her love constantly by running the household and, most importantly, through her cooking.
Because of this, my house is a living version of Eat Drink Man Woman with my wife in the starring role. Actually, it’s even better since not only does she cook Chinese, but also Mexican and Italian and American and more. (As I speak chicken breasts are pan-braising in olive oil and garlic. Later they will be sliced and will join sun dried tomatoes and shrimp and fresh bell peppers in a light fettucini dish which is one of our favorite pastas. The fact that it was 102 degrees today hasn’t kept her out of the kitchen.)
In spite of the nearly 20-year drought of verbal affirmation of love, I live in a house full of love.
Which leads to the shower. Building this shower the right way – by hand, step-by-step, from the layer after layer of the pan, sloping the drainage just right, cutting the marble and choosing a challenging design for the floor which greatly increased the amount of work, grinding off sharp edges, polishing exposed cuts, and today spending the entire day wearing myself down to an exhausted puddle as I grouted everything – it occurred to me that I’ve finally completely adopted my wife’s way of expressing love. This is a shower built for us. Built as an expression of love.
Tonight at dinner she’ll say, “Thanks for all your hard work, the shower’s coming along nicely and looking great.” I’ll say, Thanks for making dinner, it’s wonderful, as usual.”
And we both know that means, “I love you.”