This Is Just To Say

The note is pinned to the fridge where I left it this morning.

You have eaten all the plums.

They were for jam, you greedy so-and-so. My only consolation is knowing you’ll be shitting until the weekend.

Sleep tight. And please buy more plums!

Love you.

S x

Some couples flirt over email. Some stay up talking long into the night. We have our notes.

Thanks to opposing shift patterns, we’re together maybe two or three times a week: sometimes just for a few minutes, sometimes for a whole day or night. (Rarely for any longer than that, except for holidays or when someone dies.) It’s been that way for most of our marriage. It’s probably the reason we’ve stayed together so long.

Our partnership has evolved like any other. We have our ups and downs. We say harsh words and take them back. We joke and tease. We share memories and make plans. We know each other better than anyone else could.

We just do most of it by notes.

Of course, some things can’t be achieved through notes. Like making babies. But our shifts were more forgiving back then so we surprised ourselves by making three of them. We coordinated most of their upbringing through an increasingly functional series of notes stretching 20 years, punctuated by occasional family camping trips and funerals. Those were the toughest years. For a while there we lost ourselves amongst reminders for dentist appointments and paperclipped permission slips. As the children grew, hints of our old selves emerged: an extra kiss here, an in-joke there, a surprise post-it note on the bathroom mirror. It was like courting all over again.   

I turn the paper over to see his reply. Somewhere in the 90s, daughter number two became very upset by all the trees that suffered for our notes. We have replied to each other on the back ever since, continuing long after she left home. She has tried to get us into text messaging but it has none of the romance. The paper in front of me is the perfect reflection of us: two different sides of the same coin.

Forgive me. I will go to Tesco on my way home in the morning.

They were delicious though. Just like you. I regret nothing. Neither do my bowels.

Sleep tight. Good luck tomorrow.

A x

I see rushing in his looser-than-usual scrawl. He must have overslept again. I smile and re-read it.

I think about my next note as I bring in the washing. (He hangs it out in the mornings before going to sleep and I bring it in later – one of our many routines.) It will be the last note I leave on the fridge before work.

I retire tomorrow.

After that I will be there when he gets home every morning and I’ll see him off every dinner time. Six months later he will retire. Then I suppose we’ll hardly ever be apart. It is an alien thought, although I don’t know why. He is already everywhere in this house: his mug on the side, his almost-finished crossword, his toothbrush next to mine, his smell in our bed.

I wonder how he feels about us growing old together, in the same house at the same time. Will it be like an endless version of our summer holidays? Or an endless funeral? He would say the reality will be somewhere in the middle. Like a weekend in Weston-Super-Mare.

A restless night passes. In my dreams I have a note to write but I can’t find the paper or pen or even the words. In the morning, I’m exhausted and nervous about the day ahead as I sit alone at the breakfast table. But the note comes easily. They always have.