You’re Not Listening to What I Said

 “Yeah, that’s not really how old cars work.”  Bride and I were talking about the Galaxie.  She told me what she wanted from the car was pretty simple.  She wanted to be able to just get in it and go.   Being the helpful engineer that I am, I immediately started explaining the reality of owning an old car.

They’re old.  They have quirks.  You pay attention to them.  You listen for noises.  You know what each rattle means and which ones can be ignored.  Sometimes getting ready for a trip involves more than just turning the key.  Bride listened to all of that.  Then she looked at me.  “You’re not listening to what I said.”

There are certain sentences in a marriage that should make you stop talking.  That was one of them.  I want to be able to just get in and go.  If I wanted to drive across the country, I could.  I laughed.  Ok.  Let’s think about what that’s going to take.  And we did.   That was one thing about Bride.  She wasn’t particularly interested in starting with the limitations of whatever was sitting in front of her.  She started with what she actually wanted. 

And then, we figure out how the hell to get that.

I had seen it before a thousand times.  In our second house the pantry sucked.  It was more like a thirty inch by thirty inch closet.  She designed one with narrow shelves top to bottom   Nothing was allowed to hide behind anything else.  You opened the door and could see what was there.  Simple.  Except it wasn’t. 

I had to move walls, cut up the concrete floor to redo plumbing and build a new room.  I did think the idea was brilliant. I had also never seen anything like it, which meant I had no idea how the hell I was going to build it.

Then there was the bathroom.  It was small and she wanted to squeeze every usable inch out of it.  So, she designed storage running floor to ceiling along an entire wall.  Most of it was only 5 inches deep.  Just deep enough for what needed to live in there.  One section was an inch or so deeper because apparently, jumbo rolls of toilet paper had their own design specs.

That one was a bitch to build.  The pattern was the same.  Bride started with the experience she wanted, not the thing that already existed.  Somewhere along the way, without either of us calling it anything, she was teaching me something I’m not sure I fully understood.  Listen to what somebody actually wants before deciding what is possible.  Sometimes the answer really is impossible.  And sometimes the only reason something seems impossible is because nobody has built it that way before.          

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately because the Galaxie is sitting in my garage torn apart.  I’ve been working my way through it, cleaning up the engine bay, working on the transmission cross member, fixing things that need fixing and changing things that need changing.  There are plenty of decisions to make along the way about what stays, what gets rebuilt and what gets replaced.  And underneath all of those decisions is a requirement that was established before we even moved to Nebraska. 

Get in and go.

Bride isn’t here to remind me of it anymore.  And somehow, that is still the standard I am working towards.  Could I get in this car tomorrow and drive it across the country?  If the answer is no or I’m not sure, then I’m not done. 

I didn’t realize all those years ago that her way of thinking about things became part of mine.  Bride never needed me to tell her what was possible.  Hell, sometimes she wasn’t even interested in what was possible.  She wanted me to understand what she was asking for first.  Then we could worry about possible.

That distinction has stuck with me.  Because once ya start with the constraints, you tend to build something that fits inside them.  Start with what you actually want, and you might have to move a wall.  You might have to cut up a concrete floor.  You might have to build a ridiculous five inch deep bathroom cabinet with special accommodations for jumbo rolls of toilet paper. 

Or you might spend a bunch of nights in the garage rebuilding an old Ford.  Could I get in the Galaxie tomorrow and drive it across the country?  Not yet.  But I know what it’s gonna take and I’m doing that.

Maybe that’s another thing she taught me.  Not yet isn’t the same thing as no.  There are plenty of things I don’t know how to do when I start.  The pantry was one of them.  The bathroom cabinet was another.  And there are things on this car right now I am still figuring out as I go.

Bride never seemed bothered by that part.  She didn’t need the whole path figured out before deciding where she wanted to go.  She just needed me to hear what she was asking for.   I could work out the rest.  I suppose that is why “get in and go” still matters to me.  It isn’t just some specification for an old Ford anymore.  It’s something Bride wanted, and somewhere along the way, I wanted it too.

So, I’ll keep wrenching away on it.  Someday, hopefully in the spring, I’ll turn the key, back it out of the garage and know I could point that big ole hood in any direction I wanted to.  I could just get in and go.  Turns out, I was listening.