Tension over comprehension

June 27, 2007

“Yearn to understand first and to be understood second.”
Well, Ms. Beca Lewis Allen, I keep trying to get my husband to take this advice, but he’s not getting it.
Though I’ll admit I’m not following my own counsel— as I yearn to be understood and to understand second.
It’s a woman’s prerogative, right?
So around and around we go.
The sages believe that souls attract to those who are on the same frequency and that if you move out of frequency, or out of sync, life doesn’t flow and goes into gridlock.
Let’s put that into the context of Mr. and Mrs. If the soul be wife, and she supposedly attracts a soul called husband who be on the same wavelength as she, then why, oh why, is it so much work keeping said man on the same page about a myriad of things, including the toilet seat rule, doing the dishes, vacuuming, dusting, taking out the garbage, and the importance of choosing the Oprah Show over Battlestar Galactica?
I love my Pete and we are lifers no matter what. Yet, it still be hard work to keep him tuned in to the household facts of life that frequently slip between the cushions on his side of the couch or collect with all the whisker hairs behind the sink taps in the bathroom, where I invariably drop my toothbrush.
I was sitting out at my spot by the creek the other evening, listening for sage comprehension advice on the wind, when four male mallard ducks flew by chasing one reluctant female around the sky.
“Oh, brother, all males are alike. They have one thing on their mind,” I blurted out loud.
Suddenly, after nine years of marriage, I had the answer to the law of attraction and all the frequency problems with my soulmate. I quickened my pace back to the house and peeked around the corner into the living room.
In a sultry voice aimed at the man prone on the couch, and raising my eyebrows up and down, I asked, “Honey, would you draw me a bath?”
“Sure, dear,” he replied, moving to sit and get up. I went off to brush my hair, get undressed, and find that little black number I had bought in the city.
I was gone from his sight about five minutes and still hadn’t heard the rush of hot water running into the tub. I came out of the bedroom wrapped in my bath towel to find Pete sitting at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on, pencil in hand, and studying something in front of him. As I drew near and saw what his interpretation of my request was, even my best flat stare impression couldn’t express how sure I was that aliens had just kidnapped my husband and replaced him with a space cadet.
There on a piece of grid paper was his pencil sketch of the new bathroom he’d envisioned for our remodelling project due for construction in 2015.
“Is this what you had in mind, dear?” he queried, ever so unsuspecting to the immediate frequency static and gridlock being drafted in a stalled woman.
Yet I couldn’t help but smile because the moment was just too misunderstood not to be funny.
Author Christina Baldwin once said, “When you’re stuck in a spiral, to change all aspects of the spin you need only to change one thing.”
So I just dropped my towel.