Cream Cheese, making wrong, and love.

I am in the kitchen, boiling the kettle to make a hot water bottle for that special person in my life, Rebecca. And I notice that the Cream Cheese is LEFT OUT ON THE COUNTER. UNWRAPPED. It is just sitting there. Not in the fridge. Not wrapped. I know that moments before she was making a cream cheese bagel, so SHE left it out. And I am reminded of all the complaints she has voiced about me leaving stuff out, or not rinsing the milk bottles, or putting plates in the sink. And here I have evidence that she does it, too! Fantastic! How can I use this to prove that I am right...

I will not call her up to have her take care of it. That is just not a tactic I condone, as it backfired on me when my parents did it to me. So I wrap up the Cream Cheese, and put it away, mulling over what I should do. I decide to let it go, and finish filling the water bottle.

A little while later, I am in bed waiting for Rebecca to join me. Her hot water bottle is cozying up the bottom of the bed. And I start thinking back to the Cream Cheese. I have the thought I could start a note pad and record the incident, as I know that if I don't, I'll forget, and in the heat of our next 'disagreement', I can bring it up as proof she is as guilty as I and she should get of my case. I also think of what other options I have. I can also bring it up right now, and point out her failing. But cozy though the bed might be, I know that I would get a cold shoulder should I go there. Or I could just forget about it. All three options seemed unsatisfactory. I looked some more and saw that in all cases, I was still making Rebecca wrong. It was just a matter of when. If I wrote it down, I would be storing it up and making her wrong in the future. If I tell her now, I would be making her wrong right now. And if I just forget about it, I am still left with having made her wrong in the past.

I had a real dilemma. Because making another wrong is the cause of distance between us, a loss of affinity and love. Yet how could I turn this episode around and generate love between us?

It would take a shift of my point of view. The fact is - the Cream Cheese was left out. I also know that I can count on Rebecca to clean up after herself, to reliably and consistently not leave the Cream Cheese out. I also know she is a very squishy human, and can make mistakes, like I do. I also remembered that while I was fixing the kettle, Rebecca was fussing over a spot that had been growing on my back, and she is very concerned over it, and that I should urgently get more medical attention on it, that it could be infected. I assure her it is not, and relate the various medical opinions I had already got to appease her, and I agree to get more attention on it as soon as the hospital can see me.

So I saw that in the space of her concern over me, which is ultimately an expression of love, she merely walked past the Cream Cheese in a haze of love and concern. For me.

Now I have the power to really put this in the past - there is no making wrong in that view of what happened.

By then, Rebecca had discovered the hot water bottle, and was cuddled real close. I shared with her my victory over the past, and my victory over making her wrong. After that, the hot water bottle was redundant...