The little things

When I was newly married, my husband and I barely had two nickels to rub together.  We lived in this old house that had been converted into apartments.  It was dark and dank, the musty smell only occasionally masked by the pungent aroma of Indian food escaping from under our neighbor's door.  There was a huge purple paint stain in the middle of the bedroom floor that was only semi-covered by our bed.  A paper grocery sack served as the door to our apartment size freezer.  The bathroom was so small, my husband had to do his business sitting sideways with his legs in the kitchen.  It was quite a lovely place.

Back then, we couldn't afford cable or even a house phone.  We had to walk two blocks to use a pay phone. (Do pay phones even exist anymore?)  It was no fun calling collect from a pay phone to talk to our parents for three minutes.  I think prisoners even have better phone privileges than that.

All our furniture was hand-me-down or bought used.  We were fortunate enough to have gotten a couch, love seat, two end tables, and a small kitchen table with four chairs from another set of newlyweds.  It was the second time around for them so they had double of everything and were willing to part with half of it for a little bit of nothing. 

We drove the 1976 Ford Maverick, three speed on the column, that had been mine since I was sixteen. It was poop brown with poop brown interior. We did soon afterward upgrade to a Chevy Chevette with a $78 a month payment.  Oh, those were the days!

Our first Christmas, we had an ugly white artificial tree we picked up at Big Lots for ten bucks.  It was all of three foot tall and pathetically bare.  There wasn't much under it either.  But that didn't matter to us. It was ours, and we liked it.

It was a more modest way of life back then.  Simpler.  In a lot of ways, sweeter.

We couldn't afford to go out much or have many nice things.  Luxuries were out of our reach.  Back then, I was doing all my writing the old fashioned way, pen to paper.  Not that I minded too terribly much, but I certainly can type a lot faster than I can write.

When I got married, I had to leave behind the electric typewriter that I used all through high school.  My three younger siblings still needed it.  But I doubt they had the same connection to it.  Sitting at that machine, correction strips nearby, I pounded out not only many a Croxford paper (those from my high school alma mater will understand the reference), but I also spent hours spilling my thoughts and ideas all over plain white sheets of paper.  With the click, click, click of the typewriter keys, I moved stories from my mind to the printed word.  To me, that was like breathing life into something that hadn't existed until then.  With words, I could create whole worlds, tailored to suit me.  I could give birth to people, making them in whatever image I wished.  Whatever I could imagine, I could bring to life.  Writing was not only a means of escape but a means of great personal discovery.

My young husband, (we were eighteen at the time) did not seem to fully understand my need to spend large blocks of time filling spiral bound notebooks with stories and random thoughts and little notes with seemingly no real value to them.  He didn't mind that I did it.  He just didn't get why I did it.  How did I find pleasure in pouring over pages and pages of written words, first writing, then reading aloud, then writing again?  He just didn't seem to see the point.

So the afternoon he came home from his job at a small factory and announced proudly that he had something for me, I had no idea what to expect.  He was holding a large box, trying to balance it's weight as he stepped down into our meager little living room.  It could have been anything.  We needed so much.  He said the people at work were just going to throw it out.  He hoped I could use it.  He hoped I like it.  With curiosity piqued, I watched as he lifted this monstrous contraption from the box.  I didn't know for sure what it was at first sight, but I knew it had an electrical cord, and I knew it had lettered keys.  He quickly informed me it was a word processor, not a typewriter exactly, but close.  I remember clapping my hands and laughing aloud, tickled pink with my 'new' writing machine. 

Today I write with ease at a computer, watching each word fall into place on a big monitor as I go, spell check following along.  But as it turns out, the littlest things in life sometimes leave the greatest impressions on it.  Maybe that's because the little things rarely are. 

Even now, I look back on that moment some twenty two plus years ago with special fondness, not because the machine was so precious to me or because it forever changed my life in any way, but because at that moment, I knew my husband got me.  He understood that at least part of who I am is a writer.  He, whether instinctively or through insight, knew that nurturing me in one area would open me up to nurture him in others.  He showed me love in a brand new way that day, by giving worth to something simply because I did.