Because I continued working after my husband retired, he decided that he should take over more of the household responsibilities. Mostly, he wants to load and unload the dishwasher and to do the laundry. I have appreciated this help for many years, and I have come to rely on it and to expect it. Of course, while he has always been diligent in washing the dishes, and he uses a lot of effort, the dishes are not always clean when he has finished. That problem has only gotten worse. I count on washing pots and pans before I cook because they will come out of the drawers and cabinets still dirty.

Pots and pans may still have traces of the last meal on them when I am ready to start on the next, but they are reliably in the right places. Kitchen gadgets, spoons, spatulas, juicers, peelers and so forth seem to baffle Miklos. He is not sure what they are, so he doesn’t know where they should go. The result is that I frequently spend quite a lot of time trying to locate them.

The laundry is worse. While he can still handle his own clothing and most household items like kitchen towels, napkins, and placemats, my clothing seems to be a great mystery to him. He has difficulty distinguishing between a tee shirt and a skirt. The result is that I often have no idea where to find my clothes.

I have asked him to please just leave them for me to put away, and he will remember that through one cycle of laundry, but forget the next. So I must hunt through closets, chest, and shelves to find what I want to wear in the morning. I try to view it as a game, but there are days when it is just too much. I run late because I cannot locate the blouse that goes with the skirt I already have on. These are minor things, but they add up.

I know many people are in a much worse situation. I know of spouses who no longer recognize one another, both suffering from dementia of one sort or another, and who try to eject the other person from their home. I know of spouses who have to spoon feed their loved ones, change their diapers, bathe them. I am not sure where they find the stamina. It reminds me, however, that as long as Miklos can send me on a treasure hunt for the dressing shaker, or my linen gaucho pants, it means that he is active and capable of almost washing the dishes and almost putting the clothes away.

Small blessings, but blessings, indeed.