After 32 years of marriage, you get pretty familiar with another person’s routines. You know what they like, what they don’t like, and the things they do so regularly that you could probably predict them without even being in the same room.
Melanee had her routines. Some were comforting, some were expensive, and a few probably qualified as utility company enrichment programs.
Let’s start with coffee.
We lived less than a thousand feet from a Dutch Bros coffee stand. Close enough to walk, which was convenient because Melanee loved her coffee. Specifically, a medium cold pour white coffee mocha with two extra shots.
Not a large. Not a different flavor. Not something new she’d seen advertised. A medium cold pour white coffee mocha with two extra shots. She did get a large from time to time when she was extremely tired – but medium MOST of the time.
She would ask me to get her one almost every day. Eventually, I’d walk up to the stand and some of the seasoned baristas would start making it before I even ordered. Apparently I had become less of a customer and more of a delivery service for a woman whose coffee preferences were already on file in everybody’s head.
I figure I spent more than $1,500 a year on mochas alone. Thank God they finally introduced an app that let me earn a free one occasionally. After spending that much money, getting a complimentary mocha felt less like a reward and more like a small financial settlement.
Then there were the showers.
Melanee loved a hot shower. And by hot shower, I don’t mean a quick ten minutes to get clean and get on with your day. I mean 30 to 40 minutes of actively showering, with enough steam to turn the bathroom into a sauna. And a singing booth.
She definitely got clean. I’m fairly certain anything living within several feet of her also got clean.
Since she passed, I’ve noticed that our power bill has dropped significantly. It turns out that heating enough replacement water for a daily 40 minute shower costs real money. I suppose I should be grateful for the savings, although that’s a pretty lousy way to discover just how much hot water someone used.
And honestly, I’d gladly pay the extra electricity bill to hear her singing in there again.
Holidays were a little more complicated.
Melanee grew up in a family that was Jehovah’s Witness, so she didn’t have the same attachment to traditional holidays that some people do. For much of her life, she wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about celebrating them.
In her later years, though, she started enjoying some of the winter holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. And one of the things she enjoyed most was cooking.
She liked preparing the food, deciding what we were having, and making sure things were done the way she wanted them. Which, as anyone who read yesterday’s Picky probably understands, could be a fairly specific set of instructions.
Over the years, she taught me how to prepare many of those dishes by having me work alongside her in the kitchen. Eventually, on holidays when she didn’t feel like cooking, the responsibility landed on me.
Fortunately, I’d had a pretty good teacher.
Of course, knowing how to cook something and knowing how Melanee wanted it cooked weren’t necessarily the same thing. There was still a right way to do things, and I’m fairly certain she could tell when I took shortcuts.
Birthdays were another interesting contradiction.
Melanee loved celebrating other people’s birthdays. She enjoyed recognizing them and making sure they felt special. Her own birthday, however, was a different story.
I always suspected she wasn’t particularly fond of the reminder that another year had passed. She was perfectly happy to celebrate someone else getting older, but when it came to her own birthday, enthusiasm was considerably harder to find.
After 32 years, these little things became part of the normal rhythm of our lives. The coffee runs, the endless hot water, the holiday meals, the birthdays she wanted to celebrate and the one she would have preferred to overlook.
None of these were grand occasions. They were just things Melanee did, and things I became accustomed to doing because they mattered to her.
I didn’t spend much time thinking about them while they were happening. I was usually too busy walking over to Dutch Bros, waiting for the hot water heater to recover, or figuring out how much food we needed for Thanksgiving.
Now I find myself remembering them in surprising detail.
I can still tell you exactly how she wanted her coffee. I know how long she’d probably be in the shower. I know which holidays she enjoyed and which ones she could happily do without.
And I know that if I walked up to Dutch Bros tomorrow, there’s a decent chance somebody who remembers me would still know what to make.
A medium cold pour mocha with two extra shots.
Some routines are apparently pretty hard to forget.