Heavy Lifting

Most marriages or other partnership living arrangements, I suppose, evolve in time to a point where each of the partners has his or her own household duties. Some partners talk about the issues of who does what for the common good and make decisions, I am told; others just drift into it. We may have been in the first category at some time--it's been so long I can hardly remember--but if so, we are certainly also in the second.

That's why, when I am suddenly called upon to assume the duties of the other partner because of temporary disability, I find myself in the ludicrous position of not knowing basic things. In which of the five or six grocery stores that we frequent is it possible to buy his favorite gaseosa drink? What about his Caesar salad dressing? Is Goldie (the cat) going to accept any old brand of moist food and kitty litter, or do I have to buy that special brand? Where, by the way, do I actually find the two different kinds of waters that we drink, once I have nailed down the right store? We usually split up when we go in to a grocery store, each with a list of our specific items, and meet at the checkout counter.

We each have our separate duties, and the shopping questions are managed mostly by talking them over. Others are not resolved quite as quickly. The first two bags of kitty litter that I bought sat for several days before it finally dawned on me that I had better empty the old and put out the new. The other major issue is driving out to stores; when we first moved to Spain we downsized to no car, because we lived in town and could walk everywhere. Now we live in a neighborhood in the country and we have to drive, so we have a car, but it is one car. And guess who drives it most? Well, he is not able to drive it for a few weeks after the operation, so I am doing the driving. Driving is not a problem for me, though I really don't like having to manually shift down and then up going through the numerous infernal rotaries that we have in Spain, and I am one of those people who doesn't mind driving around the block to avoid making a dangerous left turn.  But it's the parking that is the real problem. I don't like the tiny parking spaces; I don't like parallel parking, especially when the available space is on the left side of the street, and especially when it is on a hill. And I don't like dark, underground parking garages.

All of these little adventures are presenting themselves to me now, and guess what? I am mastering them. But the interesting thing is how many of them involve heavy lifting.Those kitty litter bags are really heavy. So are all the agua con gas one-liter bottles for me, and the gaseosa one-liter bottles for Johannes, and the one-liter milk brick packs. And not only is each of these items heavy, it used to be that we were two to carry in the groceries, but now we are just one. Plus it's not just carrying in groceries, it's also carrying them out, in the form of recyclables. I have a lovely six-bottle canvas bag from Meijer that we use to recycle the wine bottles, herring glasses, and occasional other containers, so that doesn't get too heavy. The Cambridge nylon bag that we use to stuff plastic beverage, salad dressing, and other envases in doesn't get heavy. And the bag that we use to collect paper doesn't get very heavy. But I found myself at the neighborhood recycling station this morning with a very sturdy carton that had held six bottles of wine. and I realized that there was no way that I could break down that carton without breaking down at least one finger nail. So I brought it home again. Johannes broke it down with five strong swipes of his hands, and I deposited the sides and bottom in the bag that I will eventually take back up to the paper recycling station.

Then, of course, there is a certain amount of additional lifting, of extra laundry, of rolling up the carpets when they were in the way, of moving things from upstairs to downstairs, of the walker, and chairs in the house, and the wheelchair, and even occasionally of the person. And did I mention  the watering can and hose that I use to feed the upstairs and downstairs gardens at least every second day--never a job that was on my list before.

Which all goes to show that it is easy to forget those tasks that the other person in a partnership performs on a regular basis, simply because they get done on a regular basis, by habit, and they don't get announced. So now I can say thanks, dear, for taking care of so many things that I never realize that you do.