For him, it was a plan. And, that was hard.

Open ended all the way, perhaps borne of a deep seated low self esteem (“I don’t deserve to want anything”) he’d much rather let the overwhelm swirl in his head until, completely oppressed, 3 o’clock p.m. would arrive at which moment he would fatalistically declare: “The day is over.”

She, on the other hand, the result of 25 years of the strictly imposed assembly line mentality expressed in the form of a teaching position within public education, had learned – entirely against her nature – to plan. A day could never reach its end, with any hope of success, without a clear, linear, step by step process divided precisely into 40 minute increments.

Thus had become her life.

And, in order to actually prove her worth (another deep seated esteem problem), she’d managed to pack active effort into each waking minute. For every one of those 25 plus years, should less than an hour of uncommitted time appear, this would manifest as a vacation – gorging on cookies and ice cream, in front of late night television, in the words of the late Dudley Moore: “Time, well…spent.”

He’d spent his operating from a point of zero expectation. Trained in nursing, submerged in the kind of erratic, exhausting days and weeks known only to the world of American human health care. No two twenty four hour periods ever the same, in any way, he’d grown to covet the equally protracted blank spaces whenever they presented themselves. Yet, his work was never self directed; rather, at the mercy of emergent need, what he called familiar was an act of response.

She, the head of the classroom, had always been required to generate action. Furthermore, framed in forty minutes at a time by day (and, two and a half hours at evening rehearsals) for each of these, clock watching had become the driver; the challenge was beginning, developing, and completing – and, then, doing it all again, all day until – sure enough – 3 o’clock, when the day shift really did end.

Here they then were, at her house, facing thirty years of accumulated kitchen paraphernalia. Hers had been a deferred fantasy, that of preparing hot h’ors doerves and sweet creme treats for enough guests to populate the living, dining, and music rooms, the attic loft, the backyard, and the wrap around porch. This wistful dream only realized once, at the house warming; thereafter, from the advent of Ronco Tv she had acquired every tool, slice/dice/splicer gadget, storage system, and portable fryer publicly performed by the proponents of InventHelp – only to completely ignore them, forthwith. There was no therapy for regret; full circle, having come around to both the application and compartmentalization of this lifetime, even the storage system had been of no assistance.

Time: Four hours.

Every cupboard expunged of its static story – the two dead mice in their sticky traps to the trash, their hole into the bottom shelf plugged with steel wool and Duct tape; the Pyrex bowls graduating across the counter, the holiday potpourri, candles and mugs sent to the Xmas box, the lone Pampered Chef casserole dish holding its breath in fear of the impending sterilizing pool; the Princess crystal wine glasses, the portable mixer and French press and Bullet and Bonzai Chopper and George Foreman grill, the rice maker and bread maker and Jack LaLane Juicer and wafflemaker all disinfected and repositioned behind each cupboard door – he and she had successfully reoriented her entire food preparation space into the back end of the second decade of the twenty first century.

She kissed his mouth, and smelled his neck, and smiled him out the door. Back at his place, the dogs needed out, the tomatoes staked. She turned, and took the five steps from the mudroom to the edge of the double wide porcelain basins completely invisible beneath their mound of soaking Rubbermaid and stainless steel. A sink load of dishes was worth doing alone. Because she couldn’t, they’d brought themselves all the way through her past to their present, and they’d done it together.