Trena Eiden

I once read, “In marriage all the seams are tested. To make it work, you must learn to row as one.” I’m pretty sure Gar never got that memo.

There’d been a check on the dryer for several days and I’d seen it there on the afternoon I placed a to-do list underneath it. The next afternoon, when I got home from work, the check was missing. The list was there, but no check. I texted Gar to see if he’d seen it that morning. He never answered so I started searching high and low, investigating every nook and cranny.

Getting down on all fours, I crawled around, shining a flashlight in every crevice and under each piece of furniture, thinking it must have floated downward. I pushed things aside, lifted things up, and even went to my car to see if I’d lost my mind and forgotten I’d taken it out there. I shined the light behind the washer and lifted the dryer to no avail. It was not to be found.

In desperation, I contacted the person who’d written the check and begging forgiveness, asked if it could be rewritten? Yes, it could. God bless me. As I was cleaning up the mess I’d made ransacking the joint, Gar texted, “I thought I saw something blow over the back of the dryer last night when I laid my stuff up there. I looked but didn’t see anything. Could’ve been it.”

I scrutinized the text. This man can figure out how to fix anything. He’s a mathematician and a speed reader. He’s aced a year’s worth of tests in six weeks. His brain power is easily twice that of mine, yet here we are. Did he not think it noteworthy to inform me of this critical bit of information last night? And if not then, at the very least, this morning?

“Something fluttering out of sight” would have been news I could use. I’d already looked behind the dryer 10 times but I looked again. It wasn’t there, which is lucky for him. If I’d have found it there, after all that rifling and rooting, well, I don’t know what might have happened to Gar. Remember “Murder, She Wrote?” Yeah, somebody would have needed the sleuth, Angela Lansbury. I would die for Gar, but I might kill him before it comes to that.

Days later, I found the check, wedged in a niche, just out of sight.

Fast forward several weeks …As I left a client’s one afternoon, I was given a check, but when I got home, I didn’t have it. I searched my pockets and the car-twice. Unsympathetically, Gar said, “You have the worst time.” I was hoping that when I went back the next morning, I’d see that the check had dropped in the grass and sure enough, I spied it as I pulled up, damp, but acceptable.

The next day, on our way to Denver, we stopped at Subway in Rawlins. I had a gift card but was short $3, so Gar took out his money clip, peeled off the dollars, then, handing me the truck key, said he was going to the restroom. Getting our food, I went to the truck, then Gar came out and we drove to Laramie and I checked into a motel as Gar got the luggage.

Next morning as we packed up, Gar said he couldn’t find his money. Besides currency, this clip included credit cards, driver’s license, CDL, medical card and a host of other things making it an inch thick. He searched the motel room while I loaded our bags, then I searched the motel room. I explained our anguish to the front desk, then called Subway’s manager, before calling our credit card company.

In a snippy voice, I asked Gar if he wasn’t sorry he was tart with me over my losing the check? I felt a little smug. Arriving at our kids’ house in Denver, I explained the situation as the grandsons brought in our parcels. Handing me my jacket, 11-year-old Garrett, said, “Gram, it feels like something’s kind of heavy in the pocket.”

What? Oh no! Oh yes! It was Gar’s money clip. Gar frowned at me. Apparently at Subway he gave it to me when he gave me the truck key. Under threat of death, I wouldn’t remember him doing it. And the best part? Gar doesn’t remember giving it to me either.

We are definitely a match made in heaven.