The Economy of Love

I tend to worry about finances and used to go overboard with the budgeting. My frugality was at its height when I was a single mother of two teens. For instance, we had no toaster. Why buy a toaster when you can broil the bread and save on counter space? When my daughter suggested we buy a printer, I told her that holding tracing paper up to the computer monitor and drawing what she would have printed was good for her hand/eye coordination and added that in my day, we chiseled our own copies onto slabs of rock. 

© Teece Aronin - All rights reserved. For prints or image licensing inquiries, email chippeddemitasse@gmail.com.

Whenever money was tight, I would buy one stick of deodorant, one tube of toothpaste, one hairbrush, and so on to share between the kids' bathroom and mine. Mornings looked as though we'd all tumbled from train berths to the aisle below. The "aisle" was the hall outside the bathrooms. We'd dash in and out of the bathrooms and up and down the hall, passing, tossing, and flipping toiletries to one another. This, I told the kids, reinforced time management, sharing, and skills they could use if they ever ran away from home to join the circus.

Back then I was in love with a man I'll call "Luke" whose dog I'll call "Jackson." Jackson was a Great Pyrenees weighing about 150 pounds. At Luke's house one day, I became convinced that even something as sensitive as couples counseling can be achieved on the cheap with a smart and empathetic dog. 

 

Luke and I had been having an intense conversation. It wasn't a fight, but the issue was serious, and we were at odds. Luke was sitting in a dining room chair, and I sat, criss-cross applesauce, on the floor nearby. Luke suggested I leave so we could gain some perspective. Jackson, who'd been monitoring the situation, rose immediately, strolled over, and sat on my lap. He then laid his head on Luke's lap. It was as if he were saying, “Luke, I love you - Teece, SIT."

"I'll leave when you call Jackson off," I challenged. 

Luke said nothing, which was good because I didn't relish going home to two kids juggling toiletries and acting surly because we didn’t have a toaster or a printer. Then I asked, "Why do I get the rear end?"

Luke replied that I deserved the rear end, but he was smiling, and we were able to talk things through.

Jackson let me up and shot me a look, its message crystal clear: "Today I'm waving my fee. Next time bring plenty of kibble. And you did deserve the rear end.”

Paying a dog Jackson's size in kibble could get pricey. Then again, a dachshund could never have bridged that span on its own. Maybe it would have stacked up some pillows first. Then it could sit on my lap and still place its head on my lover’s.

That would have worked well, too.

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Just Pretend I'm Not Here

If you've ever loved a cat, you know they sometimes love you back - oddly, occasionally, inconveniently - if not madly, truly, deeply. Every cat I've ever loved had its own peculiar preferences for spending time with me. 

Take my cat, Silas, a large orange tabby. Si's idea of a cozy rendezvous is sitting with me in the bathroom. If I do manage to sneak into the loo without him, he paws the door hard until it sounds like someone's trying to pound it down - which someone kind of is. The pawing is relentless, and even a task as basic as the one he's interrupting becomes impossible. 

© Teece Aronin - All rights reserved. For prints or image licensing inquiries, email chippeddemitasse@gmail.com.

Sometimes, if I'm home alone, I leave the door ajar so I won't have to get up and let him in. Within seconds, his basketball head butts the door wide open, chonky middle following, and tail, pointing straight up like the mast on a frigate. He strolls in as if to say, "Everything is under control! Go about your business! Just pretend I'm not here!" 

Once in, his approach and demeanor vary depending on his mood. There's the version where he plops down on the bath mat and settles in like the customer at an all-you-can-eat buffet who’s cleaned out the hush puppies pan - twice - and is prepared to wait for as long as it takes for a fresh batch to be fried - 20 minutes before closing time. 

A variation on that theme is Silas, the annoying neighbor. Wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian print shirt and plaid shorts, this neighbor flops down in your backyard chaise just as you were about to nap in it and brings only one beer - the one he's drinking. 

Sometimes, thinking I'm alone, I'll wonder where Si is only to see him emerge without warning from the linen closet or under the sink - like an Addams Family member roaming through hidden tunnels or behind walls to appear when you least expect it. 

When I'm running late, standing at the mirror, frantically slapping on makeup, Silas plucks my last nerve by doing figure-eights around and between my ankles. If Silas were human, he'd be that guy who wakes his wife up at 5 a.m. bugging her for you-know-what. 

My favorite Silas move - the one that makes me smile, even as I glance at my watch - is the one where he settles atop my bare feet with his paws curled against his chest and purrs. One could argue that there's a whiff of practicality in this, that Silas is holding me hostage in my own bathroom just so he can warm himself with my body heat. But how do we know Silas isn't trying to warm me? Or maybe he's killing two birds with one stone by keeping us both warm. Diapering babies, cooking someone’s dinner, patching a kid's jeans, shoveling a neighbor’s sidewalk are often acts of love masquerading as practical tasks.

When Silas lays on my feet, his purr seems primeval like something that has rumbled since the dawn of time. 

Why should I worry that he's slowing me down - especially when I’m going too fast to begin with? Why shouldn't I admire the ingenuity he tapped with this win-win solution for warming us both? 

And why shouldn't a cat and its human meet up around the toilet just so they can be together for a while? Humans have done it around bonfires, funeral pyres, and office water-coolers for years. 

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