I Want To Care

I just deleted about 300 words I had written about teamwork and gardening. The blog post was a glowing testament to Forrest’s willingness to do the jobs I don’t want to and my happiness in the mundane work he gets bored of. It was all going well until he stopped in to say hi and we had one of those little marital moments. You know, when there’s a little soft spot of annoyance and one of you accidentally pokes it with an unintentional comment. In all honesty, I could type out the whole exchange and anyone outside of this two-person relationship would have no idea what I was talking about. (It was about getting our carpets cleaned, if you must know.) But after 13 years, a poorly placed sigh can lead your wife to delete a 300 word tribute to how awesome you are. I’ll admit it, I’m that petty.

I grumpily walked into the kitchen to make some tea and maybe brainstorm a new, Forrest-free blog post. He apologized, I apologized, and we both shrugged it off. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. But something he said stuck with me. “I want to care more about our carpets. I really do.” I believe him. But I don’t think he will. He’s really just not built to care about carpet cleanliness.

But, frankly, does it matter? What matters to me is that he wants to care about the small, stupid things that are bothering me. And I think my feigned interest in yet another engineering debate is the same thing. I want to care about how so-and-so set all test failures at priority zero which means that the important things weren’t getting triaged correctly. I really do. But I’m not built to care about test passes.

The two of us face this all the time. He could give a crap about military history, which I eat up. And I have no interest in depressing novels about the meaning of life. But we really do want to care, and maybe that’s half the battle.

The original blog post was about how if we each bring our skills, then together, all the hard things get done. But I think I’ve written that one before. More important, maybe, is admitting that sometimes, we don’t have what each other needs. Those gaps between us will exist. Whether that’s in marriage, friendship, parenting, or in our broader community. None of us can get everything we want from others. Sometimes, we have to admit that there are things other people just cannot provide for us. And then we need to decide whether to take care of those needs ourselves or simply to let it go.

How much more true is that right now? When many of us are pushed to the brink? I wish we had a common language, some obscure German phrase that means, “I do not have what you want me to have. But I will try, as hard as I can, to care.” Then we could go around letting people know that we’re not giving them what they want out of choice, but out of necessity. That’s not resignation, that’s acceptance. Acceptance of our mutual limitations, of our mutual humanity. And what better gift could we give people?