Kate and I are creeping toward our golden anniversary.
If all goes well, in about three years we will have been married for half a century, which sounds romantic until you realize that most long marriages are not held together by moonlight, violins, or poetry.
They are held together by routines.
Routines, habits, coffee, refrigerator discipline, and a mutual agreement not to call the police unless absolutely necessary.
Without routines, Kate and I would spend half the day looking for our glasses and the other half wondering why we walked into the room.
One of my routines is coffee.
Every morning I make coffee for the two of us. Not because I am a trained barista. Not because I wear a little apron or make foam shaped like a swan.
I make coffee because, after nearly fifty years, I have finally figured out how.
The beans come from a friend in Guatemala. Five pounds for fifty dollars. Excellent coffee. Better than almost anything I can buy locally, and it arrives without me having to stand in line behind a man ordering something that sounds like a legal brief.
Our coffee maker cost ninety-eight dollars.
It produces exactly four respectable cups of coffee.
The problem is distribution.
Marriage, I have discovered, is not about love.
Marriage is about fairness.
If one person gets even a quarter inch more coffee than the other, international tensions may develop.
Not immediately.
But eventually.
So I devised a system.
The first pour goes into one warm cup.
The second and third pours go into the other cup.
The remainder goes back into the first cup.
After years of experimentation and calculations that would impress NASA, I can now divide the coffee with almost perfect precision.
Kate receives exactly half.
I receive exactly half.
The marriage survives another morning.
People occasionally accuse Kate and me of being cheap.
This is unfair.
We are not cheap.
We are frugal.
Cheap people spend money badly.
Frugal people spend almost no money and then explain why this proves they are smarter than everyone else.
There is a difference.
After the coffee comes the milk.
To reach the milk requires opening the refrigerator.
We own a Sub-Zero refrigerator. New, it cost somebody eighteen thousand dollars.
Fortunately, that somebody was not me.
We bought it used.
It works beautifully.
I have developed a refrigerator system.
Open the door.
Grab the milk.
Close the door.
The operation takes approximately two seconds.
I have explained to Kate many times that every second the refrigerator door remains open allows precious cold air to escape into the kitchen, where it is immediately unemployed.
Kate listens patiently.
Then she leaves the door open while deciding what else she wants.
I have photographic evidence.
Actual photographs.
I have shown them to her.
She remains unimpressed.
This is another reason marriages require patience.
The final element of our refrigerator strategy is that we leave empty cartons inside.
Visitors occasionally look into the refrigerator and ask why we are storing empty containers.
The answer is simple.
The cartons are filled with cold air.
Cold air is expensive.
Why throw it away?
The cartons sit there quietly, already chilled, helping the refrigerator maintain its temperature.
At least that is my theory.
The Sub-Zero is now old enough to vote and still works perfectly, so I choose to believe the evidence supports my position.
There is one more coffee economy.
Our condominium building contains twenty-four units. One of the advantages of this arrangement is that we all share the cost of heating the domestic hot water.
Every morning, dozens of our neighbors are showering, shaving, washing dishes, and otherwise participating in civilization.
As a result, by the time I wander into the kitchen, the hot water coming out of the tap is nearly boiling.
Naturally, I conducted an experiment.
I calculated how much electricity it costs to heat water in an electric kettle.
Then I compared that figure to the cost of obtaining nearly boiling water from the communal supply.
The numbers were decisive.
The building was already heating the water.
Why should I heat it twice?
So now we preheat our coffee cups with hot tap water.
Kate has her cup.
I have my cup.
Neither of us would dream of drinking from the other’s cup.
After nearly fifty years together, some boundaries remain sacred.
We fill the cups with hot water, wait a moment, then pour the water into the sink.
This accomplishes two things.
First, the coffee stays hotter longer.
Second, it saves us from spending approximately three-tenths of a cent heating the cups ourselves.
Over time these savings add up.
Not enough to buy a yacht.
But perhaps enough to buy more coffee.
Some of our neighbors claim this wastes water.
We disagree.
The water was already hot.
The heat had already been paid for.
All we are doing is borrowing a little of it before it vanishes into the plumbing system of history.
A few neighbors have suggested that Kate and I are cheap bastards.
We prefer the term careful stewards of financial resources.
Fortunately, this disagreement has never caused serious problems.
They have to live with our opinions.
We do not have to live with theirs.
We have a lock on our door.
Perhaps none of this makes much sense.
Perhaps normal people do not divide coffee with mathematical precision.
Perhaps normal people do not store cold air in empty cartons.
Perhaps normal people do not conduct household energy audits before breakfast.
But after nearly fifty years together, I have learned something.
A good marriage is not built from grand gestures.
It is built from a thousand tiny habits.
A shared cup of coffee.
A familiar kitchen.
A refrigerator that refuses to die.
And someone who still makes you smile, even when she leaves the door open.
