Love is...Cleaning the Chopsticks

For those of my readers who don't know, my wife Lina is first-generation American. Her parents are from Taiwan. As such, she is maestro with the chopsticks. She does a pulling apart move of food with the chopsticks that one must be of Asian ancestry to pull off. I knew that I was getting the hang of using chopsticks when I was out in California at her parents place and I picked up a peanut. With her dad looking on, I felt like the Karate Kid, getting accepted into the Asian food martial arts academy. I don't think I will ever get to the black belt of pulling food apart with the chopsticks. But as for picking up the food and stuffing my mouth, I do OK. If I had to use chopsticks as a matter of life or death, I could feed myself sufficiently to survive. It is rather second nature by now. I impress my Caucasoid friends at Chinese restaurants with my prowess. There was some initiation I passed when I learned to use the sticks, some acceptance into the Yang clan where I would still be on the outside looking in if I was still forking it. I actually prefer chopsticks to eat Asian food. It just seems right and true.

Now, onto another matter of chopsticks, the after the eating part. Lina has some issue with washing chopsticks. It is not rational. She leaves them on the counter dirty like some neighbors dog dropping doots in my backyard. I don't get it. So, I decided to conduct a little test. The problem was that I told her it was a test and that skewed the results. I opted not to wash her used chopsticks about a week ago. Instead, I just left them on the counter festering away like some sores. OK, it wasn't that gross. I am taking some artistic license. As of yesterday, the chopsticks still had not been washed by her. Worse yet, another pair had appeared. Please curb your sticks, madam. In a test of wills between Lina and I, I will typically lose. Although I can be stubborn as a mule, Lina can elevate something like this to be akin to a hunger strike. She won't give in. Those sticks would rot on the counter, particularly since I informed her of my little empirical study. So, I started to think, how am I going to get out of this mess? She is not going to give in...this now has become a stalemate at best, or a conflict where I will lose badly by my continuous refrain of "You used them, you wash them."

This morning at 5:00 am, I quietly and without fanfare, washed the chopsticks. It wasn't a defeat. Instead, it was a victory. For you see, washing the chopsticks is something more in her eyes. I am not sure what. But to me, it is just a simple act of washing chopsticks. I invest no psychological burden on myself when washing them. The whole study was more for fun anyway. I got some mileage out of teasing her about "Day # of the Unwashed Chopstick Strike." As such, I got some jollies.

What today can you think of that means little to you as a simple act but might have a world of meaning to someone else? Some act that is imbued with love that lets someone know that you care about them?