Oatmeal and Charity

Picture this.

I’m sitting at the computer, focused on making important email contacts (important means I’m choosing words carefully and crafting my messages rather than just blowing off casual conversation), when I realize my husband is standing behind me.  He is positioned slightly off to the left side, poised like a silent ship anchored in the night – only it isn’t night.  It is morning.

I turn.  We make eye contact.

“Yes?” I query.  He’s usually outspoken and starts talking well before we’re in close proximity, so I wonder what situation could call for such a timid approach.  He is offering me a $20 bill.

I think, OH NO…he is buying me off!  Occasionally this is a joke between us – he offers payment for some favor I would automatically do anyway.  I don’t want to be interrupted.  After all, I’m writing, which is important. I impatiently think, Oh brother, WHAT does he WANT?

“Would you…” he begins tentatively, with the raspy voice of an old man with a cold (which is what he is and what he has). 

“Yes?”

“Would you…make me…some…oatmeal?” 

His monetary offer is supposed to be funny, and I bark back with mock disdain:  “Are you too feeble to cook your own oatmeal?? Are you paying me to make your oatmeal? Are we talking super-simple here?”

But then I study his facial expression, which seems genuinely needy.  I remember, and soften. He doesn’t feel well; this cough has been hanging on far too long.  In the past month he drove me thousands of miles back-and-forth across the country to visit our newest grandbaby.  Now he’s asking me to make oatmeal, a five-minute job.  I can do that.

Suddenly I am out of the chair, hugging him, walking to the kitchen.  And I want to make oatmeal more than anything else in the world, which is so much better than a $20 bill.