What was I looking for exactly? To put it plainly,
crustified boogers.
Yes, you heard me correctly. Crustified boogers. And no, I
do not have children yet to leave me such delightful little surprises. The
boogers I was searching for in my shower were those belonging to my husband.
Living in close quarters with another human being, in
particular a spouse, has a tendency to reveal the more disgusting and distasteful
habits of someone over time. The fact that my husband blows his nose in the
shower is one such habit that I was introduced to before we were even married. And
while it completely grosses me out most of the time, I have come to accept it
and fully expect to hear the action as it occurs each morning while I get
ready. It’s become part of my routine in a similar way to it being part of his.
If I ever find myself wondering whether Andy still blows his
nose in the shower, I am most always reassured after showering after him. More
often than not while I am shaving my legs, I glance over to notice a small
speck or two on the shower wall….remnants of his nasal evacuation process. I
always smile when I spy one and then use my thumb nail to gently scrape it off
and send it on its merry way down the drain.
Over time, Andy’s crustified shower boogers have become
these curious little reminders for me of his presence in my life. I cherish
them because they let me know that he is close at hand. But for the past two
months my life has been devoid of Andy’s boogers….and more importantly, of him.
Andy is a civil engineer who largely deals with projects
involving airports. What this means is that most summers he is sent away to
some little podunk airport in the middle of nowhere to work. The past two
summers have been a real blessing as he has been allowed to stay in town. But this
summer, and all the way up till November, he will be living and working on the
property of the West Yellowstone airport.
Not a bad gig right? I mean people travel from all around
the world each year to visit our nation’s first national park. It sounds
glamorous but in all reality Andy is living in a trailer, working 14 hour days standing
on sheets of asphalt, and driving each morning to a shower facility designed
for fire fighters. And he will be roughly three hours from our home in Helena.
What his new reality for the next six months boils down to
for me is that there will no longer be crustified boogers in our shower. But it’s
so much more than that.
With him only being able to come home one or two days a week
at best, I don’t get to wake up next to him or bury myself in his arms so I can
avoid going to the gym. We don’t kiss each other goodbye as we both leave for
work in the morning. I don’t swing by his office to pick him up at lunch so we
can run home and watch another episode of Orange is the New Black on Netflix
while eating. I don’t get to experience him yelling at me after work for binging
on tortilla chips and salsa while I hangrily await him to cook dinner. We don’t
get to say Grace together over the meal he has prepared with love for both of
us. I go to Mass alone a lot of weekends and still leave a space for him on the
end of the pew.
My life this summer has turned into spending a great deal of
time thinking about all of the lost moments and time with my husband. And I
hate every minute of it.
I won’t say that absence makes the heart grow fonder….and
Andy and I have spent a great deal of our time together over the years apart.
But I will say that absence does make you value the small things….like
crustified boogers. It makes you hold each other longer when you do get to hug.
It makes you say the words “I love you” a little more slowly and with more
meaning behind it. It makes you cut through the mundane details of your day and
just ask instead about how the person is actually doing. It makes you really
prioritize spending QUALITY time with a person and teaches you to be PRESENT
with them instead of just physically in the same room. Absence in any form or for any reason makes
you realize just how little time we get in this life with the people we love.
We must not waste or take for granted a single minute of it.
