Cherish the Small Things...Like Crustified Boogers

The other morning I was standing in the shower—head tilted back—encouraging the hot water and steam to strip away my cares and ease me into the new day. My morning shower is usually the ten most blissful minutes of my entire day. The normal waves of anxiety and stress that pummel me throughout the day disappear for those ten minutes. But for some reason that morning I suddenly found my eyes frantically scanning the white walls of the shower and the back panel of the shower curtain. What I was looking for was something so small it would be undetectable to most. But for me, it was a source of great comfort and joy. My search, however, left me empty handed that morning.

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.