Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Stinky-Winky

Every weekday morning I rise early (6:15... that’s early to me) to get my five year old off to Kindergarten. I am usually so exhausted that I grab the nearest pair of sweats and a tee-shirt to put on until he is safely aboard the bus and I can go about getting ready for the rest of my day. This morning the tee-shirt I happened upon was one of my husband’s and already worn.

Back in the dating days this would have been a real find. I would have reveled in a pheromone-induced stupor, fantasizing about the manliness that produced such a heady aroma. With each sniff, visions of his killer baby blue eyes and naturally muscled body would dance in my mind.

But not this morning. Today I got a whiff of myself while preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Gecko’s lunch and thought, to borrow a phrase of his, “Whew, stinky-winky.” My next thought was to put “do some laundry” on my to-do list for the day.

Hmm, sometime in the last twelve years I stopped finding my husband’s dirty tee-shirts enticing. How could this happen? What does it mean? A mini panic attack set in. I tried some concentrated sniffing, far from the adulterating scent of peanuts, eyes closed... Nothing. Well, nothing positive anyway.

I walked my little guy down to the bus-stop and then headed back up to the house. The tee-shirt went directly into the washing machine. While pouring a quarter capful of Tide into the machine, I contemplated love. Ok, so maybe sweaty shirts don’t smell so good to me anymore but here I was at 7 a.m. washing my husband’s clothes... that’s love isn’t it?

In my mind, I called him up at work, “Hey baby, I wore your tee-shirt down to the bus this morning and realized how much I love you.” In reality I tucked his nice fresh clothes into his drawers and thought about what yummy dish I might prepare for his dinner. Sometimes that’s just the way love goes in our house.

5 comments:

Monica said...

Every time you write you capture something that is so real to me, like if I was a better writer I could have written that!!! I love reading your posts~

sharilyn said...

ah, that is love indeed.... : )

Jennifer @ JenniferDukesLee.com said...

A great piece of writing.

This brought back memories, and helped me think this morning of my own hubby's T-shirts -- and how I used to wear them. We have livestock now, so his shirts are off-limits. They are Stinky-Winky Times Ten.

Billy Coffey said...

Now I'm wondering if this is what goes through my wife's mind, too...

She loves my shirts, especially the broken-in, tattered, and faded T-shirts. But now that I think about it, she always fishes the ones out that still have the scent of cologne on them.

She says they smell good.

I always thought she meant ME.

L.L. Barkat said...

Ah! You make me smile.

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