Fixing a problem

Ever have one of those people who can solve any problem if they just sit and think about it long enough? No? I married one of those people. Mr. Fix-it. A man who was as direct as a bullet from a gun and as sharp as one, too. In the time it took me to look at him as he opened the box to the portable pool heater, he was already inside, grabbing materials to make the problem go away.

Simple. For him, yes.

Not so much for me.

In the blink of an eye, he was in the garage, grabbing the wire splicers, electrical tape, and a few other tools that would make his life a little easier, and back on the porch before I could get off the couch with our 9-month-old daughter. No conversation had. Just Mr. Fix-it, solving the problem in his head. Always three steps ahead, he was.

I’ve learned by now in my seven years of marriage that I just don’t ask. He didn’t tell me, so he didn’t want me to worry, even if he was about to rip open a different cord to jimmy a new extension cord to power the portable electric heater for our daughter’s swimming pool. No, he wouldn’t tell me, because he knows my anxiety-ridden brain would be firing on all cylinders and asking questions about what he was doing. Questions that would limit the momentum of his genius brain in action. So. I. Stayed. Quiet.

I leaned back on the couch and played with my daughter with one eye while my other nervously watched my beloved Mr. Fix-it strip the wires and rip this poor, undeserving piece of cord and plug apart before rigging it into another monstrosity. Watching as his nimble fingers shoved wires in where they are supposed to go. Lord knows where. I have never paid attention to what he tells me about how he does this. I just watch and pray that the man doesn’t decide this is the day that he is hit with the volts or amps of the house. (I don’t know which one. He’s asleep, and I would hate to ask him the proper terms. If this is taken out, then clearly I asked him. If not. Then. Well, I didn’t.)

Where were we? Ah right. He rigged a Frankenstein’s monster plug to be used as an extension cord to heat the pool of our nine-month-old. Everyone got that? Good. Moving on.

He was meticulous with the damn tape. Winding it over and over again as if I am watching this man defuse a bomb. The whirling of the sticky ribbon wound over the incision before he ripped it off with his teeth. Something he really didn’t need to do, but it seems to add flourish.

From start to finish, the problem and fix took about fifteen minutes of tool gathering, splicing, shoving, wrapping, and then presenting his creation to me. Holding it up like a man proud of his work. (This is also the man who spent five days rewiring our house because everything was so shoddy that it was a flip away from combusting. But, that’s besides the point.) He shows off his creation. His prize and joy, as if it were the best thing to ever come out of him.

Not the baby in my arms drooling on a teether while waiting to go for a swim. Actually, she didn’t care. Just liked being included at this point. Ahem. Moving on.

Oh! This cord was his prize and joy. His fixing of the problem that I finally saw fully. The portable heater’s cord wasn’t long enough to reach our empty inflatable pool. I will tell you that again, for good measure.

The damn cord wasn’t long enough to reach the pool, so he jimmy-rigged a shoddy extension cord, putting running water and electrical voltage near my baby. Yeah. He did that. Mr. Fix-it did that. He wasn’t fixing a broken outlet as I thought. In that engineering brain of his, that extension cord was the only way to get his goal. Warm water for our baby. Bang up job. Kudos to him.

It shouldn’t have come to anyone's business that I got up from the couch, handed our daughter off to him, walked right over to the pool in the middle, a few feet away from the heater, and gave it a solid kick. Not too hard. I didn’t want to overstep his glory of solving the problem. Watched as it skidded across the floor where the heater was already there. Done. Problem officially solved. The whole relocation took less time than it took him to mouth “wait...”

He looked from me to the pool to the heater, neatly waiting to be placed in a water-filled inflatable pool and go about our evening. Yes. He realized he had overshot the problem tenfold when he could have easily thought inside the box (for once) and moved the lightweight object towards the power source.

I don’t think that I’ve ever done something like that, at least not towards him. Mr. Fix-it. His eyes held a sense of betrayal and personal offense that I was even able to calculate something far simpler than his monster plug solution. The shock of it was priceless. I still remember the look on his face as his mouth opened to say something, and for a moment, words failed him.

Our daughter grabbed and mouthed the tape while he just stood there, dumbstruck by my feet of kickery.

Me? Well, I cackled. I laughed. I wheezed until I couldn’t breathe anymore, and still pulled more air into my lungs and gave it a go. I chortled out and slapped my knee as I giggled into a snort. This man. This wonderful, brilliant, kind, intelligent man was so focused on fixing the problem that he sometimes forgot to find the simplest solution.

I don’t understand electricity as he does. I can’t do half the shit he can. He figures out the hardest of problems like they are third-grade math, while I’m sitting here trying to add 25 plus 35 and wondering why the math ain’t mathing. So when I get to be the one who solves it.

The one who has the simpler or faster solution — just a foot and an empty pool with four seconds of not overthinking, I will take it. I will take it every time.

I like to be the one to remind him of that.

The pool filled up fine. The water was warm when we all got in. His ego got checked, hard. But that man has always found ways to think himself outside of problems. It’s nice I get to show off a little. Just once. And I remind him at least once a year since.