Word Count: 376
Looking back, she thought that she could stickpin her annoyance to the first argument about the shingles for the house. He thought they should go for the 20-year shingles, meaning those guaranteed for 20 years. The 30-year he felt would be a waste of money since they likely would need to sell the house by then, unlikely that both of them would still be alive and healthy enough to maintain a house or have enough to pay for a re-roofing job by then. She suggested the 25-year shingles as a compromise. He finally agreed.
Recently everything went like that. The last refrigerator (though she pointed out that nothing lasted twenty, thirty years anymore). The last stove. The final wallpapering job in the living room. She felt she had to choose so carefully, since she’d be living with the last new carpet she’d ever have. He went from an SUV to a station wagon; the winning point being the difficulty of climbing up into the higher-based SUV when they got older.
She was over her own mid life crisis, getting used to the softness of her skin, the gray hair like frosting through her thick dark hair. And the one-piece bathing suit that still flattered her figure. These were little adjustments, she felt, not final choices. She didn’t want to buy a pot with consideration to its own life cycle. Out of spite once she bought a fragile crystal vase that she set on the edge of the bookcase. He frowned and suggested she move it. She said she didn’t plan on its lasting thirty years.
Everything was bought based on its warranty. Everything, he said, would need to last a certain length of time. She asked whatever would they do if something didn’t. He just grunted because she refused to understand.
Chocolate Almond Coffee in the morning had the ability to make her slow down and reflect. She wondered if perhaps he wasn’t right. That they were on their final twenty, maybe thirty years of living. That everything should be planned around that fact.
That week she withdrew half their savings, flew to California, and lived the life of a free-spirited beachcomber with a man twenty years her junior.
