Baby of Mine

Shannon is about the sweetest thing around. He doesn’t complain that I still haven’t caught up on the laundry from when I was sick a month ago, and then just tired. That I let the dishes sit in the sink a little too long before I get them in the dishwasher. That I’ve been using days off as a vacation I haven’t had in months instead of doing housework.

Instead, he lets me spend hours reading the news and then pursuing other computer projects. Hours napping. Hours putting off everything else because I just need the time.

And when I finally got around to doing the laundry I’ve been putting off, only a small part of it, he gets up and helps me hang and fold it.

Sort of. There’s a reason I do the laundry and he doesn’t. He means well, and I appreciate the effort. And some things come out OK. Others, I just readjust or re-hang in the closet where he can’t see me.

It reminds me of a very surreal lecture from my sophomore English teacher in high school. She told us that a very good friend of hers has just been diagnosed with cancer. Her friend had always been an immaculate house-keeper and had taught home-ec for decades.

When she couldn’t do as much as she could before, she said that she heard her husband vacuuming and hitting every piece of furniture and woodwork in the house.

At first she was upset. She wanted to get up and show him how to do it right. But then she realized that she really couldn’t. And was amazed that her husband who had never touched a vacuum in his life was vacuuming the floors for her.

Furniture and woodwork get dings and dents. It’s the price of living with them. Clothes will come and go.

What is priceless is the effort of those who love us to make our lives a little easier.

And I’ll re-hang the clothes as long as I need to. I’m a sentimental old fool who has learned that what someone does honestly is much more important than whether the clothes hang straight.

In the words of the semi-immortal Bonnie Raitt: “He’s not much, goodness knows/ From his head down to his toes/. But he’s so special to me./ Sweet as can be./ Baby of mine.”

Shannon’s my baby, and always will be.