This Month's Story

“The first mate was drunk today” captain signs.
“The captain was sober today” 1st mate signs.
-- Successive days’ entries in the logbook of a coastal steamer --

I put down the cup on the side table. The coffee was delicious. The aroma was rich and the flavor was strong with a hearty, almost nutty, musky flavor. I felt good. An inner voice began urging, If it’s so good, say something. She’s your wife. Compliment her.

I looked over to where Stella was reading a magazine. “Honey, you’ve outdone yourself. This coffee is perfect. That’s the best cup I’ve had in a while.” There I had said it. I began to feel better already.

Stella put down her reading and stared at me. Her look told me I had said something wrong. My warm feeling started to dissolve.

“Why? What was wrong with last night’s coffee?”

“Nothing! Nothing! It’s just that tonight’s coffee is unusually good. I mean last night’s coffee was good, too. Very good, in fact. I liked it...”

It was no use, I was babbling.

“You didn’t say anything about it being good last night. You know I make your coffee the same way every night..

It had started.

Stella and I have been married for almost thirty years, and our relationship is extremely good. I don’t think I could have found a person that I would have better enjoyed spending those thirty years with or, in fact, the next thirty. People are people and it’s a miracle at times when two people find that their partnership is the one best suited for them to spend a life with.

But there are times...

Now in our case these times usually have to do with our trying to communicate with each other. Usually it goes quite well, but occasionally, like my trying to find the right words of praise for a single cup of coffee, things take a right-angle turn for disaster.

Sometimes she or I find we are arguing over what can be best described as a misplaced comma in the early exchange of a conversation. There occurs a snap in syntax, an unintentional reading of what ordinarily would be thought to be an innocent remark. When this happens, and I will admit it does not occur all that often, she and I start tumbling down a rather torturous path of outbursts, yells, and a long silence.

Yet when our tempers have cooled, and we both try to figure out how to grab the other and call it over, done, quits, we can’t really know what started the discord to begin with.

Mishaps like that between nations have started wars. I was told once that England and the United States are two great nations divided by a common language. I believe it. I mean if Stella and I can argue, why not a little thing like the War of 1812.

A friend of mine once told me that he always knew when his wife was pregnant. This knowledge was usually revealed rather dramatically at the supper table. He would pick up a knife and a piece of bread and ask his wife to pass the butter. She would then jump and yell at him to get his own butter and run crying into the bedroom.

A White Egret in the Shallows

Puff! Revelation! She was pregnant.

He said it was more accurate than those pregnancy tests they sell at the pharmacy. They now have four children, so I guess he has had to get his own butter several times.

The problem with the spoken word is that there is usually a subsurface flow of understanding that goes along with it. There is a rhythm, a tempo of meaning that colors the surface chatter and delivers the joy or sorrow of what is meant by the person speaking and the person listening.

When the speaker and listener are not joined by that surface flow, there occurs those small mishaps, such as our cup of coffee, and that is unfortunate.

But when there is a true connection, then there can be those supreme moments of feeling between people of thoughts, ideas, fears, aspirations, moods, joys, love, life...

“I have a dream!”

“We band of brothers!”

“I do.”

“You did what?”

“You’re next.”

“Congratulations!”

“I love you.”