Wendy's Blog

Take a deep breath sometimes!

Funny how life holds up a mirror and presses your nose into it. Sometimes, I think I want a relationship, sometimes I don’t.

I locked myself out of the house today, so I went to beg assistance from my neighbor, a good-looking handyman about my age with just enough kindness and just enough of an edge to make him appealing. I’m sure that’s why his sweet, nice wife of eight years snatched him up long before I arrived on the scene.

He leapt to my aid and grabbed some sort of metal thing to attack my patio door. We tested it first on his own door, the same model, and it opened quite easily. I watched him climb onto my deck in the darkness with the metal thing and a flashlight.

I think they are a cute couple. His wife is a comfortable-looking sort of woman, rounded and soft; an office worker; she decorates the house elaborately for Christmas; they have a lot of dinner parties with friends; I have seen them having a romantic brunch a deux on their deck from time to time.

When I occasionally rue my single status, I admit I sometimes have a flicker of envy

She came home in the middle of the rescue attempt. We had a “girl chat” for fifteen minutes while he struggled with my patio door and I debated calling a locksmith.

Victory! He walked out my front door and into his.

After thanking him profusely, I said to her, “I guess that’s a good thing and a bad thing, too. We’re not as secure as we think. He tested his method first on your patio door and had it open in a few seconds.”

He interrupted, saying that I must not have fully locked their door when we were testing the lock.

She said, “Wait. You were able to open her door but not ours?”

He said, “She didn’t lock it all the way.”

She said, “You mean hers?”

He said, “No, I mean ours.”

She said, “So you didn’t lock our door or you didn’t lock hers?” Her voice was up an octave.

She wasn’t there when we tested his metal tool on their door, so I succinctly explained it to her.

She said to him, “That’s all you had to tell me.”

He said, “I DID try to tell you but you assumed…”

I laughed uncomfortably and interjected, “I have a spare bedroom if either of you ever need it.”

And in that short interchange, I remembered the pettiness and bickering of my own ten long years of marriage.  Suddenly, my intermittent desire to engage in such a situation dissipated.

Why don’t arguing people just take a breath and realize it’s not worth

causing so much ado about nothing?

I went back to my very own empty house, shut my very own door and listened very calmly to the peace.

 

Would you like a copy of Wendy Keller’s FREE ebook

“The Top Ten Tips to Coping with Crisis”?

[addtoany]
 

Share Your Thoughts Here

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.