I am delighted to have the opportunity to repost my first post. I was very proud of this one, and became supremely honored by cartouche's comments and  presence on my blog then, and on subsequent posts. I miss her.

(sorry about the font size change. It's taken me two years to get that right!)

A Coffee Cup and a Flu Shot

While I know that the reasons are infinitely more serious and diverse, it seems that a coffee cup and a flu shot are the reasons my marriage ended. Perhaps one could look at those items as representative of the issues at hand.

He came home from work each day, a bit after I did. I cooked the dinner, I did the dishes. Every day, he left his travel cup on the kitchen counter for me to wash. Every day I resented the fact that he washed no dishes, and the least he could do is wash his friggin’ cup. So I left it here. It became an unspoken item of resentment on both our parts, he thinking, “Why doesn’t she just wash it?” And me thinking, “Why the hell can’t he wash at least one thing in the kitchen?” It is symbolic of the fact that we never talked out issues, that we never negotiated household chores, that we just expected the other to do certain things, and they did or did not get done depending on who got pissed off enough. Yes, communication was a problem (isn’t it always?)

The flu shot concerned our daughter, age three at the time. I for one had never gotten a flu shot in my life, and done just fine. I felt our very healthy daughter would do just fine as well. He, on the other hand, seemed to think that she required one. So, to appease him, I agreed to take care of it. Procrastinator that I am, I put it off, and put it off. This was the year that the flu vaccine was in short supply. Finally, discovering that our medical office was giving the shots, I took my three-year-old daughter out at 6:00 in the evening and waited in the rain for two hours to get the flu shot. By the time we reached the front of the line, they were out of vaccine. And both my daughter and I were out of patience.

 He was furious. According to him, it was the final straw. Honestly, when he sat down three months later to tell me he was leaving, he said, “The flu shot was the final straw.” Apparently I’d been fucking up for quite some time, but hadn’t known about it.

 Ultimately, these were not the reasons for the end of my marriage, but reflections of the problems within it. They make a pretty good joke when any one asks me what happened and I don’t want to talk about it. It’s sad, really. We were good friends for 20 years, yet couldn’t make a marriage work. And all because he wouldn’t wash the cup, and I wouldn’t get the shot.