Love sucks

Two years ago Sam and I celebrated my birthday by going to a fresh fish restaurant in of all places, Beaumont, California. It has always been a little bend in the road, albeit the 5000 new homes that went in there recently. The restaurant stands on the "old" side of town right next to the Mexican meat market whose pictures on the sign outside makes me want forever to be a vegetarian. But this particular evening, we went there for fresh salmon, rice pilaf, and broccoli--a meal that we especially like there. Afterward, as we drove the 20 minutes back home, Sam asked if there was anything I needed at Walmart. We didn't really want to go straight home, so we ended up strolling, hand in hand, through the store, looking at things that we might want to get someday but really didn't need.
Then we came to the vacuum cleaners.
When we moved into our present home we brought our old Hoover with us. It was on its last leg and spewed out a fine layer of dust every time we used it. I hated how it smelled and I really doubted that the carpet ever got clean. This was an important issue since our foreclosed house had stood empty for eight months before we bought it. So goodness only knew what kind of germs, dust, and dander resided in the carpets.
We hovered over the new models in the Beaumont Walmart. I had hoped to get a new vacuum cleaner at some point, and now might be a good time. I steered Sam over to the Dysons. They were a bit more than I had paid for a vacuum cleaner, but we were tired of breathing in the dust in our old carpet. It had been problematic what with Sam's asthma and my newly acquired dust and cat dander allergies.
As I lingered over one Dyson model, I noticed that Sam seemed quite interested in it--much more than I would have anticipated. "Let's get this," he ventured, running his hand over the smooth yellow handle. The machine had all sorts of levers and moving parts. I hoped that I would be able to master it.
We paid the sale price for it and carried our Dyson home. Sam was triumphant. Funny, he had indicated that it was MY birthday present. But as soon as we got home, he carefully assembled it and began vacuuming the living room carpet. Then the guest room downstairs, then the stairs.
"Honey!" he shouted excitedly. "Look at all the stuff that came out of the carpet!" And he removed the collection cannister from the front of the Dyson and held it up for me to see. It was full of hair, beige dust, and all sorts of little bits--but mostly silty type stuff. "We've been breathing this!" he yelled over his shoulder as he ran down the stairs to the garbage bin outside.
I was exhausted from a long day, so I took a shower and climbed into bed.
Could I sleep? No. He vacuumed under our bed, in all the corners of our room, and then the ceilings and curtains, using the special attachment. All along, he admonished me about the excellence in that machine: how well it swiveled, the extremely strong suction, the special accoutrements to get in crevices and to use on the couch.
It was about 10:30 when he finally stopped vacuuming. The whole house had been cleaned and I marveled about how thrilled he was about it all. In fact, I joked the next day with my secretary about how you can get a man to clean the house quite easily if you have machines involved that have (a) lots of bells and whistles, or (b) contain an element of danger. We had both laughed knowingly, and I felt very fortunate to have a clean house and a husband who was obsessed with the vacuum cleaner.
In fact, Sam's enthusiasm didn't end on my birthday. About every couple weeks, he goes on a vacuuming frenzy, cleaning everything in sight and being sure to suck all the dust out from under our bed and off our bedside tables. I've teased him about how he sometimes chides me for not using a particular attachment if I'm cleaning up after my flooring work. He seems to think that he is the one who can and should master the vacuum cleaner. My efforts have not seemed to be terribly critical, as far as I can tell from his appraisal of my work.

Although I have made a mental note about Sam's eagerness to keep the house vacuumed, to do the laundry, and recently, to keep the kitchen scrubbed, I hadn't thought much about it. Until yesterday.

We were watching a television program about an individual whose loved one had cancer. The caregiver was trying to do whatever he could to cure the sick one who obviously was close to the end. He was doing something like painting her toenails and straightening the bed covers, fanatically. I happened to glance over at Sam just then. His eyes were brimming with tears. I'm so glad I married a man who wears his feelings on his face, I thought. We watched the program to the end and Sam muted the television as the credits rolled.
"I know how that man feels," he said softly. "You see, when my mother was dying of cancer, I didn't know what to do. So I drove for two days to her her house and took along my Rainbow vacuum cleaner. It had a strong filter in it, and I vacuumed the whole house. It was all I could think of doing to help her. Maybe it would make a difference, so I did it." His eyes filled again. "I know how it is to do whatever you can hoping that your mother won't die. That's how desperate I was." His voice trailed off and tears brimmed in his eyes again.
Suddenly I realized what it meant when he vacuumed the house, our bedroom, my bedside table. "Honey, when you vacuum the house like you do, it's so I'll stay well, isn't it?" He nodded gravely. "It's not much, but it makes me think of how much I loved my mother, and I want you to be healthy, too."

I have teared up several times since that conversation, just thinking over what it means to Sam to vacuum our house. It is an expression of love that I would never have understood, had we not had this conversation. I don't get flowers from him very often, nor fancy gifts for holidays. But he loves me through his vacuuming, and that is something I get almost every week.

I love you, too, Sammy.