I am celebrating today and telling everyone! Chuck balanced the check book this morning. It all started when he went into the hospital and I "checked" 2 bank statements. Checked off everything on the statement and matched the checkmarks with the check book. "OK," I said when my final number was about $600 lower than the bank said we had, "What is ‘balancing’ and how do we do it?" I didn’t address this with Chuck until yesterday afternoon and he looked at my check marks and all the checks and papers, and he said, "I can’t do this, too much noise." You know how you take a remark like this "in" and you feel your belly squirm and your mouth make a funny smudge, and you think, "he can’t balance the check book. Yikes." So feeling it was too soon (9 weeks) after surgery, I left the papers and we moved on to dinner. My friend Karen suggested gently that the "noise" is me: "in his face with the rehab and care giving" and well, maybe, just a little! The books I’m reading show that some things don’t come back for years…. and maybe never. But every time, I worry, but I realize I can’t push him. This morning, when I finally rolled out of bed at 8:30, Chuck said, "I balanced the check book, let me show you what you missed." Sure enough there was a deposit in the exact amount of the unbalance. Add in the deposit and whammo! balance. The finer points, I don’t know because this has always been Chuck’s job. Like yard work and the Christmas letter and cards are my job. Decorating the inside of the house, my job. Decorating the outside of the house, keeping the sheds in order, car maintenance, his job. etc etc. So I guess dear readers, my advice for today is two-fold. Don’t worry! There will be small victories coming when you are care giving. Just wait. And learn now how to do those things that are his job or her job. Just in case. Happy Baptism of Jesus day and … God bless you. Love Susie
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