Call and Response

The house was big enough to give a good length of hallway between my writing room and DK’s research desk. Books filled the passage between us, his, mine, and ours. The computers, of course, clung to a single Internet connection, and what we discovered or created, we sometimes sent along the route from one room to the other. Especially images.

But more often, one of us called to the other in exhilaration — “Come see what I found!” “Come see what I’m writing about!”

Well, not quite … DK lost the strength to visit my workroom, in his final year, so the “coming to see” depended on me heading to his desk, willing and eager to step away from my own. And no, I wasn’t always ready to lift my fingers from the keyboard and my thoughts from the paragraph in progress. But there was room to respond, “Be there in five!”

Call and response. He called my name. I went to him. There is something deeply satisfying in being desired.

The biggest lesson I learned about how to keep a marriage sweet and good came from one of DK’s old buddies. I crossed paths with the man, a few months after DK and I discovered we were meant to be together. The man said a cheerful good morning, then, without…