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She put mustard on her sandwich and mayonnaise on his two sandwiches while he grabbed the meat and folded it onto the bread.
“I think that’s why God gave us the command. Don’t you? He wants us to have relationships. I think that teaching is the basis for Christianity. It’s about relationships. About other people. And it’s interesting to me how studies have shown that the more relationships you have, or maybe the better and stronger your relationships, the healthier you tend to be. I don’t think that’s a coincidence that God, who made us and who wrote the owner’s manual, knows exactly what’s going to make us healthy. Good, strong, happy relationships. And sometimes that means giving up what we think our ‘rights’ are.”
“Giving up millions of dollars in order to have a relationship. Now that’s someone who puts their convictions into practice. I admire that.”
She grinned at him. He didn’t typically say things like that, and maybe he really was feeling bad that they just got married yesterday, and there hadn’t been any kind of celebration about it.
Not that she wanted one. It wasn’t supposed to be a real marriage. So why would they celebrate it like it was?
But she had to admit, she appreciated the fact that he wanted to do something special for her. It made him feel like a real friend. After all, friends celebrated things with other friends.
She put the condiments back in the refrigerator and pulled out the cheese.
She wasn’t as young as she used to be, and she knew it was going to be a hard day. Planting trees wasn’t difficult work, but by the end of the day, her back and legs would be sore, and tomorrow would be even worse.
“It stinks to get old.” She tried not to complain about it too much. After all, with her increased years came increased wisdom. Maybe not as much wisdom as she’d like to have, but more than she used to anyway.
“Don’t be silly. You’re not old.” He nudged her with his shoulder as he walked by her to grab the baggies while she put cheese on their sandwiches, two slices for hers, one for his.
“I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, and I hate to break it to you, but you’re getting old too.”
“Being old is a state of mind. And fifty is the new twenty.”
“Says no one, ever.”
“All right. You can officially say you got me depressed. Since one of the reasons I overbid on this job was because I knew that after a day of planting trees, my back, legs, shoulders, hips, and pretty much everything in my body was going to hurt. Worse than it normally does. Since they pretty much hurt all day every day anyway.”
“That’s more like it. I want to complain a little. You were being all Pollyanna on me.”
“Pollyanna accusing me of being Pollyanna. That’s rich.” He rolled his eyes as he walked by her. She smacked him on the head as she grabbed the cheese and walked to the refrigerator to put it away.
She grabbed the ice packs out of the freezer, one for each lunch box, and walked back over to the counter. “Seriously, being a landscaper is a physical job. Are you going to keep trying to do it until you retire?”
“Being the owner of the company gives me a few perks, but it’s hard for me to imagine sitting behind a desk all day while all my employees go out and do the jobs. I... I don’t really look forward to that. But I suppose the day is coming.”
“I suppose it is.” She didn’t say anything else. She worried about him occasionally, since he did have such a physical job, and it wasn’t something that was typically easy for people their age.
“Good help is hard to find, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find enough employees to work so that I don’t have to. It’s a hassle.”
She hadn’t meant to open up that can of worms either. They’d talked about it more than once. Because landscaping was a seasonal job, it was difficult to find people who could work year after year. A lot of times, he had to start with brand-new employees every year.
And on jobs like this one, ones that had to be done before kids were out of school, he often had trouble finding anyone to help him at all.
“It’s a good thing you have a next-door neighbor who is no longer employed.”
He smiled at her joke as he shoved the sandwiches in the baggies.
She set the ice packs down in the bottom of the lunch boxes, then went to the cupboard where he always kept a stash of potato chips and crackers.
Being in Mark’s kitchen was like being in her own. It felt familiar and safe. Thoughts of getting old were a little scary. She didn’t want to have pain every day or not be able to do the things she wanted to do. While she wouldn’t trade the wisdom for anything, it felt like a steep price to pay.
Of course, now that she was married, the future didn’t stretch out so dark and dreary with her by herself. Except, what did their marriage mean? Did it change anything at all? It didn’t feel like anything had changed. In fact, for a while there, she’d forgotten that they’d even gotten married.
Everything felt...the way it always had.
She considered that throughout the day as they drove to the job and then worked for hours on end planting trees.
Chip and Stan worked on the other small patch, while Mark and she did the larger one.
