My wife, Dawn Wesley, is abnormal. Well, maybe that’s not the right word. Special? Gifted? That might be closer. Dawn has this strange ability to know exactly how many stairs there are in every place we’ve ever lived. Not approximately, not “about ten” or “around fifteen,” but exactly. She knows how many steps lead up to the second floor, how many go down to the basement from inside, how many from outside, how many go up to the garage loft, the porch, and every entryway in between. I’m convinced she could tell me how many stairs were in houses we lived in twenty years ago without missing a beat. She is like the Count, from Sesame Street. Me? I would have to stop and count just to remember whether there are two or three steps on our own front porch. Part of that is because I simply don’t care. My brain is already full, and apparently I’ve chosen to fill it with things like movie trivia, random facts about 1970s Billboard Hot 100 songs, and half-forgotten cultural oddities. Maybe my priorities should be questioned.
That difference between us became especially clear yesterday, when I had to make an emergency trip to the eye doctor. I had gotten something in my eye while working, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it out. Normally, that would be annoying enough, but in my case, it felt like a genuine crisis. I’m blind in my right eye, which means my left eye is carrying the full burden of sight. And unfortunately, that was the eye in pain, swollen, watering, and clamped shut. For all practical purposes, I was blind on the way to the eye doctor, which is a strange and humbling thing to experience. It has a way of making you realize just how fragile everything is. Thankfully, the doctor was able to remove the wood chip and told me I had scratched the eye up pretty well. It will heal, but it was enough of a scare to remind me that I probably ought to be a little more careful.
Dawn certainly thought so. Before the day was over, she had ordered me protective eyewear and informed me, in that tone only a wife of forty years can use, that I would be wearing it from now on. That part made perfect sense. But then she shifted into another kind of protective mode. She started explaining to me how many steps were in each stairway of the house, as if preparing me for a life of temporary blindness. She wanted me to memorize them so I could navigate safely if my vision got worse. I laughed, which was the wrong response. She got upset, and rightly so, because she wasn’t being quirky. She was being thoughtful. She was imagining me trying to make my way through the house, unable to see, and was doing what she always does, preparing for the danger before it arrives. She was thinking about my safety while I was thinking about how strange it was that anyone could store stair counts in their brain in the first place.
The truth is, even if she gave me the exact number of steps, I’m not sure it would help me. My mind doesn’t work that way. I would be halfway down the stairs second-guessing everything. Did she count the bottom landing? Does the top floor count as a step? What if I lose count? Is it safer to keep going or go back and start over? And somewhere in the middle of all that, standing frozen on the stairwell, my thoughts would wander the way they always do. I’d think of Jacob’s Ladder. Then I’d think of Stairway to Heaven. Then my mind would jump back to childhood, when I was raised to believe that Led Zeppelin was practically summoning demons through their music. I can still remember the warnings about backmasking, the stories about playing records backward and hearing satanic messages, and the televangelists like Paul Crouch warning us that rock music was a spiritual trap while, as it turned out, living lives full of contradictions themselves. That’s how my mind works. Dawn counts stairs. I end up in a rabbit trail about theology, hypocrisy, and 1980s evangelical panic.
That’s one of the strange things about marriage. Dawn and I are so much alike in the ways that matter most. We share the same values, the same sense of right and wrong, the same commitment to family, and many of the same joys. She has been my best friend for most of my life, and after all these years, we still laugh at the same things and carry the same burdens together. But we are also very different in ways that somehow fit. She notices details that never even occur to me. She thinks ahead, prepares, protects, and remembers. I drift, reflect, question, and wander down mental roads that often have nothing to do with where I started. She is trying to save my last good eye and keep me from falling down the stairs, and I’m trying to explain to her why I once believed rock music was a portal to hell.
Somewhere in that odd mix of practical and philosophical, caution and curiosity, counting and wandering, we’ve built a life together for more than forty years. And if I’m honest, I’d probably be lost without her. Maybe literally. Probably somewhere in the middle of the stairs, trying to remember if the landing counts.
Dr. Wesley