I'm distracted by the sound of David typing. He's on a call, taking notes. David's keyboard, supplied by his company as part of their COVID work-from-home scheme, is a monstrous black behemoth of a thing. It's also wireless, which would make it seem hi-tech. Yet by the sound of it alone, you'd think it never gets used. Each letter is loud, stiff and penetrative. Offensive to the air. I've developed an unusually acrimonious relationship to the keyboard, and considering the fact that the keyboard is an inanimate object, my anger is rather one-sided and useless. Not unlike much of the anger I hold in the pit of my stomach every day, ready to hurl at the parts of my life over which I have zero control.
The keyboard sits on our dining table, Dave's makeshift workstation. A bit inconvenient, but we don't have a choice. There's a laptop and a desktop as well; we move the computers and various accoutrements out of the way for each meal, pushing them to the other side of the table and unplugging various cables and wires in the process. Lately I've taken to eating my meals on the floor instead. It's less for me to clean, and it benefits us both in the long run if Dave soldiers through work. Every minute he isn't focused on work is a moment foolishly spent. This is my observation. It isn't a healthy thing, but it's true. His work is never finished; there is always more to be done tomorrow, and it would always be better if Dave worked through the night, but I make sure he sleeps. He needs to sleep. When it's time for bed and Dave retires to the bedroom or finally tears himself away to floss his teeth, I'll wipe down the table as well as the keyboard, freshening things for the morning. It's strangely therapeutic for me, one the lights are off and things are quiet-- even though the preceding day has been nothing but silent-- and the magic of the twilight hour in our living room is like a physical place for me that I can rest languorously in. It isn't so much a twilight place, nor is it an hour, but it's a moment. Or the shadow of one. The keyboard, however, always gives me pause. I usually move it onto one of the chairs so it remains unseen, hidden from view.
It was shortly after we met that Dave and I discovered my abnormally fast typing speed of 98WPM. I remember Dave went to work the next day and wasted an absurd amount of time taking online typing speed tests. He was incredibly proud of my ability, but refused to accept his own lack of skill-- or not even, more simply, he was annoyed at a lack of dominance or proficiency. He averaged around 40; his colleagues roughly 50. Dave works in the financial sector, at a private investment firm with offices all over the world, so when he told me about the wasted day and the domino effect typing speed tests had on his team-- they all ceased work entirely-- I humoured myself by picturing a Wolf of Wall Street-esque milieu: all operations in the Financial District grinding to a halt; uppity financiers escaping to the lavatories and snorting cocaine between each dose of "The fox jumped over the lazy dog."
Dave has worked diligently to improve his typing speed ever since and I can tell it's working. In my case, 98WPM would undoubtedly be an asset in the workplace, but it is more likely evidence of someone who spends most of her time staring at a screen because she has little else to do. Nevertheless, Dave is proud of it and I find reasons to get out my years-old laptop (which is liable to explode at any given second) and type anything I can possibly think of in his presence (even though I am out of work, have stopped all forms of creative writing entirely and never contribute to this blog). Sure, it's a bit selfish... to consciously make your partner feel inadequate because you feel inadequate.
Realising this, I came up with the idea of gratitude journals-- well, I can't take credit for the novel idea of personal reflection and recording gratitude-- but I thought it prudent Dave and I keep them for ourselves. I try not to peek at his notes. The first night we did it, we sat on opposite ends of the couch and, tilting my head to crack my neck, all I could see in his chicken scratch was, "Everything Brianna does for me that I cannot." Holding back tears, I squeezed his hand and resolved to never take the liberty of walking in on my partner's private thoughts ever again. In spite of everything, particularly that bastard of a keyboard that threatens the purity of my private breathing space, I go to sleep every night grateful for this incredible man.
The entries in my journal range in content, and, er, genre-- but the one thing they have in common is that I am seriously grateful for each and every one of them. There's the pitiful: "Our basil sprouted," there's the funny, "Our plunger worked!" ...and there's the biggest of the big: "Dave. Just Dave."
Just retook a typing test. I'm somewhere between 94/7 now.