Tax Appreciation

The Husband and I are sitting in the tax preparation office. The Husband doesn't have to be here except to sign the final forms, but he's here simply because I asked him to be.

He is watching me hand over organized papers to the clerk and watching the clerk enter data into the software program. At one point, the clerk calls a supervisor over to handle a particularly confusing piece of financial information.

Throughout, The Husband and I behave as if we are hosting one of our radio morning shows like we had in our newlywed days. The clerk and her supervisor are amused, or at least convincingly pretend to be, as they wrestle with our taxes.

Finally, the clerk has completed her work, presented the results to us, and has extracted our signatures in all the right places. She leaves the cubicle to fetch printed out paper copies from some other area of the office.

Without an audience, The Husband suddenly becomes quiet. He sighs and blinks a few times as if coming out of a trance. He looks around noticing the stack of receipts next to the clerk's keyboard and the open file folder in front of me that is now empty except for some orphaned Sticky Notes that used to label groups of papers. Blinks again.

He puts a hand on my knee and somberly says, "Hey, thank you for taking care of all of this."

"I just put a bunch of papers in a pile and arranged for someone else to deal with them."

"No, really. This was a lot. Thank you."

"You're welcome, honey."