This little sticky
happens to be a short list of all of the little, important items that my
husband would carefully jam into the pocket of his work shirt every weekday
morning for more than 30 years. It was amazing how
all of it fit. And of course, every
evening he grabbed them by the handful wiggling them out of the tight pocket
and laid them down on the dresser next to his wallet, keys and any little
treasures he would find throughout his day as an Elevator/Escalator
Mechanic. The treasures actually fit better in his pants pockets. In his shirt pocket there was the dirty, little
black book. Dirty because he had a
dirty, greasy job and wrote down each
job he did throughout his busy day. It
was also his calendar and daily planner and phone book. I checked over that calendar last year
looking for any possible little hint of maybe a scribbled little note of life
outside of his work. It was not there.
That book was all work related, as it should be. The funny thing about the
little black book is that he could never find the right size that would fit
perfectly into his pocket. So each year he would buy the same planner and,
using my scrapbook paper cutter, he would slice off the extra 1/8th inch of the
book so it would fit into this pocket. There was a stylus for the handheld
computer, a black permanent marker, a metal metric scale, metal ruler and
little tiny red screwdriver, ballpoint pen, a jumper circuit and wooden orange
stick.
Our early morning
routine was probably like everyone else.
His alarm would go off at 4:30 and after a couple slaps of the snooze
button, he would get up and in the shower.
As he dressed, his routine was usually the same. He wore a gray uniform that over the course
of 30 something years changed the shades of gray from light to dark and back
again. His black steel toed boots were
heavy and laced up pretty quickly, unless, the laces broke like the morning he was in a hurry and nothing seemed to go right. Not a good morning.
The shirt pocket was packed tightly, carefully, each piece
going it's place. Sometimes, I watched
his quiet routine of filling that pocket, clipping the phones and gadgets to
his work belt, not saying a word. I often wondered what he was thinking. I asked him once and he said, "nothing". Was it all about the pocket? Or was he already mentally at work? Could he feel me watching him? Did he really know how much I loved him? I
told myself that one day I would always remember this repetition. I had to write it down so I don’t forget. I don’t want to forget.
I went to the
kitchen to put his lunch (that I usually made the night before), into his lunch
pail. I added a bottle of water, Coca Cola, a sandwich, snack, fruit, veggie
and chips and sometimes a little sweet something. It varied according to what we had in the
house at the time and how I felt the night before. For instance, every Wednesday was peanut
butter and jelly day. I don’t
know why, he just liked peanut butter and jelly. He had a heavy, white coffee cup that didn't fit into the holder of his work truck so he built a special wooden cup holder in the console between the seats of the truck. I think it worked pretty well.
On his last day, December, 3rd, 2010, we
were laughing and joking in the kitchen, a little bit before 5 a.m., while he
was saddling up for the day. The shirt
pocket, tight with every important item in it's place. One hand quickly tapped one hip, feeling the
heavy ring of keys. Silently, he checked
the electronic communication array that hung from his belt; cell phone, work
phone and other gadgets. We were still joking around and then his eyes held
mine for a minute, he gently kissed me good bye and said "I love you". Then he
walked across the back yard to his work truck with the heavy, white coffee cup
in one hand, lunch pail in the other, keys jangling.
