Put shelves in the closet today.  Sal’s happy.  She likes it when things are neat and organized.  A tidy closet makes her very happy.  Right now she is making us a great spaghetti dinner, drinking wine and listening to the CBC.  With a smile on her face.  All because the mop and broom are hanging on hooks, the bottles are on shelves and the cans are lined up regimentally.   

She thinks it all so very civilized.

It’s freezing but our water is still running.  That means showers.  Ever since Sal and I lived on boats, we have had an exaggerated appreciation for the basic shower.  We seem to be able to go with the flow, handle what comes up and roll with most of the punches, but afterwards, we increasingly need a shower. 

I think this shower-need is the first of the ‘old geezer’ items we simply now must have.  You know how people get as they get older and more set in their ways –  what was a pleasure is now a requirement.   “Oh, I just can’t start my morning without a cup of coffee.  Not even breathing is easy without my coffee.”  Or, “Don’t expect me to go out there.  I’d catch my death”.  Or “I couldn’t possibly walk that far; call a cab!” 

The ‘softy’ list grows longer with the teeth. 

We didn’t used to say those kinds of things.  Not Sal, anyway.  She is simply too tough and had an English mother with the archetypal stiff upper lip as a role model.  Me? well, mostly I suppressed it for the sake of trying to appear as macho as Sal (or her mother).  Eventually, of course, I just let my inner whinger out but I did it quietly and rather later in life.  Then, as the mewling increased to embarrassing levels, I moved to the woods. 

The implication of their (my) declarations of weakness, of course, is that these people are helpless (or hopeless) without Jamaican coffee, high-thread-count cotton sheets or warm-room comfort to within one degree of their preference. Self-limitation, it seems, is being used as a statement of taste rather than what it is: self-limitation.  And the older we get, the more refined our taste until we can’t seem to do anything.

Sadly, it is a club I now belong to.  

Sal and I used to shake our heads at these self-imposed personal ‘requirements’ for life.  Six billion people around the world don’t ‘need their special pillow’ or ‘stop walking without their Rockports’.  They carry on in the old, well, ‘carry on’ tradition.  And so did we.

But then the need for showers started to creep in.  Then wine and/or martinis around dinner.  Dinner could still be a ten-peso tortilla with fish paste but we simply had to have the cerveza-with-lime-wedge at the very least.  Rot began to set in.

I’m afraid it is embedded in me.  

Now we are cream-puffs and I have the silhouette to prove it.  We simply must have our showers, don’t you know?  And Sal her chocolate, me, my scotch.  Internet has crept in to the picture, too, damn it!  I’ve even traveled with my special pillow.  It is probably just a matter of time before we start drinking bottled water and buying organic Brie.

And really, just what kind of a meal would it be without sorbet between courses and finger bowls after?

Mind you, I now dress like a homeless person so maybe it all balances out in the end.