Whatever He Says

By Belinda Last Sunday was steamy and Ontario was officially in the middle of a heatwave.  As I mounted the brow of a country hill on my way to church, I saw people sitting on either side of the road on lawn chairs. Wearing t-shirts, shorts and hats, and holding flags limply at their sides, they were waiting for the swarm of serious cyclists in spandex, labouring their way up the other side of the hill. As I drove past them I gave thanks for the air-conditioned comfort inside my car. I had slept in that morning, my first at home after several busy days away, and I arrived at church late but not rushed. After so much activity, I needed to slow down; take things gently and recover a little.  The parking lot was full and had the hush that parking lots have when everyone has already arrived and gone inside. I parked in the row farthest away from the church. Across the road, gravel crunched as a car pulled into a driveway while a dog barked a staccato greeting or warning....

Paul always gets edgy when he’s going away. He is ready several hours early; bag packed, coat at the ready and his nervousness always rubs off on me. This time it’s almost time for him to leave and we have lunch before he goes. I feel like half of my brain is leaving; the half that knows how to turn on the T.V. and operate the array of 4 remote controls that lie on our coffee table. This is not a big problem. I can happily exist without T.V., but on Tuesday night at cell group there is a projector to operate. I’m definitely nervous about that. Author Malcolm Gladwell in his book, The Tipping Point, explains an interesting aspect of relationships; Transactive Memory. Although the words “transactive memory” don’t spring to mind the moment you think about intimate relationships, he says that this is part of what intimacy means and that couples, families and work groups form unspoken agreements about who will remember what. We don’t all need to know everything; we just need to know who kno...