Broke the Seal

I had brought a 12 oz. bottle of water. Klarbrunn.

It seems like lately, all sorts of different lids do not twist off easily anymore, and I was once the kind of person that people went to to get lids taken off. I was so strong. Now, I struggle. I was about to struggle to open my water.

Out of the blue, I realized, “I don’t need to sit here and be embarrassed and struggle and look like an idiot.” I just said one word: “Help,” as I handed my bottle to Tim. He accepted the bottle, and with one twist, he broke the seal for me, and handed the bottle back to me. Problem solved.

And I don’t know why. Suddenly, this little tiny gesture is like a whole microcosm of being in therapy: I hand him my bottle, he opens it, and now I can drink from it.

Everyone should drink more water.

Now that I just said that, this sounds totally even worse and ridiculous than wanting to put the moment into the gratitude record. Anyway, whatever, let’s definitely mark a gratitude that Tim opened my water bottle.

And maybe what I liked the best about it was that I only had to say one word, and the rest of it was just an unspoken exchange back and forth. Complete. Does a single word followed by exact actions qualify as “forthright communication”? Thinking back on the moment, the emotions make me want to cry. Yeah. No tears, no watered eyes, but if I thought about it just the right way, I could get some tears to drop.

Six more gratitudes happened that same hour. I recorded all of them. Only one repeat.