When I go to Bally’s nowadays, I half expect my better half to trot up alongside me as I circle the walking track. I can see his expectant smile as he finds me, and hear his chatting as he reports in about work, his stringers and headers, his horses and rises, his splinters and calluses. Conversations about nothing out of the ordinary. Questions about what’s for dinner. Meat and potatoes conversation about meat and potatoes.I hear his same old joke as he sweats on treadmill — “I’ve been on this thing for an hour, but I don’t seem to be any closer to the front!” — and I long, long, for the chance to be bored by it again.
Sometime, maybe, could one of you call to talk sawhorses and sawdust at me? Not that I would understand it, as much as I would like to hear the language again.
Friends, if you live with someone and maybe chafe at their little jokes, their little predictable ways, please realize how sacred are those everyday exchanges. The talks about what you will do about the kids, or the broken transmission, or the plumber’s estimate — these are the seemingly throwaway conversations that embody an “us-ness”, an identity, a history, a future. They are priceless.
Try not to miss them.
