EDGE Boston

Candles. A white linen suit. Notebooks. Thick wool socks. A special bottle of bourbon. These are some of the things that for many years I saved. They were perfect. Things that I loved, but stored away in drawers or closets. I was waiting for a perfect day to use or wear or drink them. Often I waited too long. The candle faded or melted when stored near a baseboard heating coil. The suit sat in the back of my closet, a bit of rust from the wire hanger marred one shoulder. There is something seductive about having a perfect thing and wanting to keep it forever.

Lately, though, I’ve been resisting that seduction; I’ve stopped waiting to use perfect things. I’ve started to use them daily. Now instead of beautiful things stored away for a fantasy future, I have the joys of their daily use. Inevitably, however, this daily use results in the end of these perfect object’s useable life. The candle burns down. The linen suit, stains. Notebooks, filled. Sock develop holes. Boubon consumed. Yes, they can be replaced; some more easily than others, but still new candles, new notebooks, fresh bottles of bourbon can be procured. Still, with particular precious things, it is a balance between treating them as a perfect, special object to be saved or using them with a particular dailiness.

Relationships are, I think, liked these precious objects: a balance between the perfect and the everyday. At their most basic level, relationships are about dailiness. They slip easily into the mundane tasks of daily life: emptying the dishwasher, replacing the soy milk, doing the laundry, jobs, commutes, mail, bills to pay.

There are celebrations in this dailiness, of course. The comfort of a shared bottle of wine at the end of a long week. Small tendernesses in daily life: a morning kiss, a surprise purchase from the grocery store, funny moments when the dryer sheet is stuck to the back of a pair of jeans. These are lovely moments of everyday living.

Still, it would be dishonest for me to not say: I want perfect moments with my beloved. I want the perfect birthday dinner with the perfect birthday gift (and the perfect birthday sex afterward!) I want to say the perfect thing that eases sadness, anxiety, and fear when my beloved needs it. I want to celebrate perfectly the minor and major milestones of life: job promotions, successes at work large and small, achievement of shared goals.

By saying what I want, I admit that I have not always fulfilled my desires. I recall birthdays botched, ill-chosen words, and significant oversights. I also recall daily frustrations that impaired the creation of perfect moments. I struggle. Part of me lives in a fantasy world where perfect things are ensconced in special places, unsullied by daily use. Part of me wants to live in the fantasy world where relationships are perfect in every moment. These fantasies are seductive.

I live in reality. In the (reality based) world of everyday life, we struggle. Happiness and contentment counterpoint frustration and misunderstandings. Shared priorities often only emerge after great conflict. Joy tempered by anger; bliss lives with disappointment. From this struggle, my own in how to live daily life and in my relationship with the beloved, emerges both the perfect and the everyday.

I’m trying to embrace them both; the perfect and the everyday. I try to meld them when I can and celebrate them independently when I must. Candles, suits, notebooks, socks, bourbon. These things are now happy memories. And maybe memory is the key. Perhaps memory is the balance between the perfect and the everyday.

A mentor once told me after a particularly bad birthday in my early twenties, "Sometime in the next three or four weeks," she said, "you will have a perfect moment together, and when that happens, say to yourself, this is my birthday celebration."

Using that sage advice, I’ve recrafted more than one memory. I’ve come to believe that part of our work in relationships is seeking and striving for the perfect; another part of our work is celebrating the everyday. Doing that, we build memories.

Perfectly. Daily.