The toothbrush story

Super corny yeah but for some strange reason I find it extremely cute that we use the "for him" and "for her" versions of every little thing right from wrist watches to prayer rugs, PJs, toothbrushes and more!

Effectively, the only mushy practice of our lives that did not change in these three years sits on the bathroom shelf in the form of our identical looking TOOTHBRUSHES; same design, different colors – most of the others broke, wore out or lost interest.

UTP is OK with it because he doesn’t know it's supposed to be romantic, it's my thing. It so bugs me every time he replaces his brush but buys just one for himself and I have to spend the next supermarket trip in the dental hygiene section frantically searching for the long lost twin of the piece that he got for himself!

When hubby switched jobs requiring us to relocate, he got here a month earlier than the baby and me. In my frenzy of cleaning up after I sent him packing to Dubai, I didn’t waste a day in giving away all the stuff that took a lot of coaxing and arguments to convince him he won't need them ever again.

[His once-upon-a-favorite tweed coat with the BIGGEST checks which were the rage 10 years ago but majorly dorky today deserves a special mention; UTP's reason for wanting to forever preserve the relic – somebody had said he looked like "Jack" when he wore it in those Titanic craze days!]

Operation cleanup took half a day. I turned around in triumph to applaud my day's work – old stuff given away, junk thrown out, bed linen replaced, it couldn't have been any cleaner, but for the first time ever, cleaning up didn’t give me a high –

It was the emptiest of feelings I ever felt... his side of the cupboard empty, his drawer bare, his stuff no longer cluttered on the dressing table.. I tried hard to sniff for his scent in the sheets and pillows but all I got was the "long lasting detergent freshness" sigh!

I stepped into the bathroom to find our twin toothbrushes sneakily huddled together in the mug and it suddenly seemed as if everything was just the same, UTP had just stepped out for something and will be back in a while to put his toothbrush to good use.

"The brush gets to stay" was my instant decision and a good decision it turned out to be, there stood a little reminder of his presence giving me strength to go on braving it through the good days and bad and it didn’t seem so long after all.

If you're done "awww"-ing over the whole scene, I can move on to the other advantage of letting the brush stay:

One of those fateful gloomy days that I stood cursing the scale and grime behind the tap, under the soap dish all the places that would never occur to the maid but wouldn't escape mayG's gifted vision, the beloved toothbrush came to save my sanity. I was quick to pull out the token of my undying devotion from the mug and gave the odd corners a good scrub.

The depression melted away in no time. As I stepped out into the room smiling, I had made sure I'd replaced the cap and plopped the brush back into the mug for another one of those rainy days ;)