Mundaneness
Copyright © September 2007
Crystal Michallet-Romero
For my wife, Jessica. Happy birthday baby!
Our lives are filled with busy times between work and school, simply trudging through the days. There is the house to clean, floors to vacuum, clothes to wash, an array of bills to pay and the cats that need to be taken to the vet. The grocery list, like a litany, displays its regimented style. Bananas, pasta, chicken, butter lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and don't for the toothpaste and soda, it reads.
The list feels short and I mirror the numerous customers in the store. My black razor, the life line to my heart, opens with a familiar dial tone, before I call you at home. With cell phone in hand I go over the list, ramble off what is already in the basket. Then I ask for confirmation, "Is there anything that you need or want?"
You momentarily pause, silence vibrates between us. Despite the distance and the invisible airwaves that keep us mysteriously connected, I feel your smile big and bright within my minds eye. Then you utter in a single clear sound these two effortless words, "Your kiss," which brings a smile to my lips.
I am suddenly alone in the crowded store with only you on the phone. My heart skips a beat and I reply, without hesitation or embarrassment, with a loud kiss into the receiver of my cell phone. This familiar sound brings out your girlish giggles, before saying ever so softly, "Come home, baby."
In this single moment I suddenly realize that this is what life is about. The banality of chores, nursing each other through broken bones, colds and flues, as well as paying bills, family life to contend with, and groceries to buy. Each dull chore is interspersed with kisses, tender touches and love's full embrace, and it is these simple acts that bring into our bland mundane life a quality of domestic bliss.