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It is our holiday tradition…I buy a few new shirts to replace his old, torn and smelly ones.  We go into his closet and choose the ones that are no longer allowed to live there.  Actually, I choose and he moans. 

“You can’t throw out that one,” Phang complains.  “It’s got history.”

“Yes,” I reply, “I can see the history all over it.  And it doesn’t smell fresh anymore, even when it gets washed.”

It was after I removed the smelly shirt from the master bathroom sink and carried it dripping into the laundry room, that I took a stand.

“Phang,” I said, “That shirt stinks.”

“No it doesn’t,” Phang replied.  “It smells like orange.”

“You mean orange with a putrid chemical smell on a shirt that has a mildew smell,” I said.

Phang explained his side.  “That shirt has paint on it and I tried a new kind of remover.”

“Well, I removed it from our bathroom.”  That should have ended the discussion.  I went to sleep with a migraine so I didn’t want to talk more anyway.

In the morning the discussion continued.  But now the minute matter had become a universal situation.  It seemed that men and women have different ideas about what smells and how to handle the smelly situations. 

This was the inspiration for the Things that Smell list. 

That’s right, we are actually listing things in our lives that smell.  In our Second Life, we have learned that compromise comes only after we have said what is on our minds.  In other words, we are too old to be mind readers.

On my list of              Things that Smell …

Cigars and cigarettes                                   

Garbage left in the kitchen sink

Garbage in the garage

Work clothes at the end of the day

Exercise clothes at the end of the workout

Clothes that are older than both of us

Clothes that have lived on the closet floor for more than a year

Things that live in his car

Mystery meat that he only he eats

On Phang’s list of     Things that Smell …

                                    Armpits

                                    Dogs

                                    Unidentified smells in the refrigerator

Then there are things that we both agree do not smell.  This includes our grandsons…and that is all.

This is just the beginning of what I see as a series of lists that remind us both to laugh at ourselves and to cherish every playful moment.  These are the precious gifts we are giving each other.

Susanne Katz is a divorce coach with Mt Vernon Counseling, coauthor of A Woman's Guide to Managing a Mid-Life Divorce, an arts and living columnist for Atlanta Jewish News.com.  She is also a regular on ShareWIK.com.

More Susanne Katz here. 

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