The Bucket Runneth Over

I’m usually getting run over by karma. Since I’m inherently lazy, superficial and self-absorbed, I deserve every pain, criticism and rap on the skull that Ms Karma throws at me. I’m a Lottery rock magnet. But I welcome each toss of the rock – each village flogging I get. In order to enjoy my caustic, biting, judgemental and gossiping self, I’m willing to take a couple kicks in the teeth on a daily basis. It’s only fair.

Occasionally I tire of myself and do something somewhat kind to fill up my karma bucket, but I’m usually in a chronic deficit and have to make a purposeful effort to deposit clean water in my bucket. There is most definitely a hole in it and if I weren’t so lazy, I could permanently patch it with something other than gum. My hot, caustic self usually melts the plug before kindness ever fills to the top.

J.D. on the other hand, innately fills his bucket without having to think about it. He doesn’t even cuss at idiots in cars. Who doesn’t do that? Every night I thank Creation that I get to lie in the same bed as him. And he fills up my soul when I touch his arm in the night. Soul juice – can’t beat that kind of energy!

It’s not by chance that his karma bucket runneth over into my bucket. Proximity, no way… it’s providence that I am meant to wade around in all that decency sloshing about. There was a lot of wallowing in the proverbial mud bath of integrity this weekend – no matter how acerbic I tried to be, I was awash in his uprightness.

All details are inconsequential because he does nice things like this everyday, but the lesson was big for me. After a 14-hour day of digging in someone else’s yard – alone, two trips to the county dump, and four stops at landscaping places, he drove an hour to dismantle that play yard I so earnestly willed to fall into our hands. It ended up being a rotten gift from the Gods. Literally. After a couple hours of hammering and ripping, J.D. and Kristin had the weather-rot wood stacked on the trailer with a dulled yellow slide atop – bound for another trip to the dump.

The jury is still out as to whether the benefactor of the play yard actually knew that the set was a bust. (The fireman’s pole was the only non-rotten thing on the set.) With the first turn of the wrench, Kristin knew she was just one more in a never-ending corp of boy scouts doing service projects for this person. The first thing out of my mouth was, “Such a User, she knew…” The only thing out of J.D.’s mouth was a smile.

And there I was pulling up those damn galoshes to my knees so I wouldn’t get the lapping surf of his karma all over me.

God, I love him.