Friday, April 05, 2002

Thursday, April 04, 2002

"We only had one argument..." my grandpa begins. My grandma and I know the next line already, but we let him finish. "And it's still going on."

My grandma smiles patiently. "We each have our separate things," she says. "He can fill up his medicine cupboard with as much as he wants, and I can fill up mine."

My grandparents' bathroom has two medicine chests. When I was a kid, I'd sleep over on some weekends. I'd always check out both medicine chests before choosing a toothpaste to borrow. My grandpa's cabinet had small, messy tubes of medicines and old prescription bottles, rusty razors and eye droppers with peeling labels. My grandma's had neat rows of soaps, hair dye, bath oil. I'd usually borrow her toothpaste -- it was generally Aquafresh. But sometimes I'd borrow my grandpa's because it was Crest with a fun vacuum bottle.

"We used to only have one," he says.

"When we used to only have one in the center," she says. "I'd fill it up too much or he'd fill it up too much. So when we got the new bathroom, we just decided to put in two."

They think for another moment. "And when she wants to watch television in the dining room, I don't say anything," he says. "I just go watch it over in the living room."

"He has his basement and I have my attic."

The basement housed a jumble of table saws and wood dust, and the attic was a quiet spare bedroom with a sewing machine and a writing desk.

"But we *live* in the kitchen," she says. "It's not the same as when you first start out, when you want to hold hands all the time. After 50 years you don't want to argue anymore. It just isn't worth it..."

"...And I have my hand towel and she has hers, and we're not always asking who took what."

She laughs, and I see they are two people telling one story.

Wednesday, April 03, 2002