the first time that i walked into the bathroom and saw my toothbrush pre-toothpasted for me i was surprised and floored. no one (except my sweet momma) had ever pre-toothpasted my toothbrush for me before. a small gesture, but i was deeply touched by this kindness. i was off-island without d a few days last week and three times (!) i pre-toothpasted his home toothbrush as well as mine, without thinking. small gestures become kind habits.
it’s the little things that count. not the grandiose presents or sweeping plans. it is the kiss on the back of your head, the carrying of your bags, the holding of your hand, the packed lunch, the note on the piano, the bacon on sunday, the coffee while your head is still on your pillow, the opening of a door for you, listening through the umpteenth repetition, the patiently-waiting while you scurry about finishing just-one-more-thing, the tetris-packing of the car, the prepping of dinner ingredients, the hug when you didn’t even know you needed one, the quiet support and noisier praise, the questions you don’t want to answer, the reminder of the breath you need to take…
and the toothpaste pre-pasted on your toothbrush. small gestures. kind habits. love.
the sand was ridged pointy and very hot to the touch, but this is the place we had already chosen to park our flipflops. each time we all walked down to where the waves hit the shore we wore our flipflops through the dune seagrasses, punctuated with sand spurs, trying to avoid the inevitable. the horseshoe crab shell was our marker…the place we would leave off our shoes and venture to the water over sand that had been warmed by extreme-heat-wave-induced temperatures. The Girl said we needed to be zen, as if we were walking on hot coals. and so we scrambled over the blistering sand, all zen-like, as we walked and then, quickly, ran asfastaswecould down to the water or back to our shoes. we became creatures of habit. no matter how far we walked along the beach, this horseshoe crab signaled home.
until.
the feels-like temperature was about 106, the sun beautiful and bright but dangerous. the sand….was brutal. i started to leave my flipflops by the horseshoe crab and make my way again across the pointy-burning-the-bottom-of-my-feet sand when it suddenly occurred to me that we could wear the flipflops further. that we might c.h.a.n.g.e. where we were leaving them. that there may be other places we could all park them. there could be another horseshoe crab parking lot. or some other marker. we could actually wear them across the pointy-burny sand, all the way down to the damp sand cooled by the ocean. brilliant!
The Girl and The Boy immediately followed, no second thoughts for them. change must be easier at 29 and 26 than it is at….our ages. we laughed aloud at this habit, this ritual, that we had created, that we were adhering to, d and i. we wondered aloud why it hadn’t occurred to us sooner to just leave the flipflops on till we were closer to the water’s edge, to avoid the pain.
i’d like to think it was because it was held over, from way-back, when our ability to zen-ly walk across burning coals excelled. and habits were easier to break.
reverse threading 