My public often asks questions that can be summarized as, how do you two remain such a happy couple?
I could try to list all the ways we navigate married life but that would run into several pages. However, an example of how we work together might provide a better explanation.
"How did you get it that hot?" she asked after sipping the freshly brewed vanilla-flavored, oat-milk latte. It was my first attempt to make one at home.
"Just clear your mind," I said and with my eyes closed, I formed a mudra with my fingers and brought my hands up to the level of my lower dantian.
Let's pause here for station identification. If mudra and dantian are new words for you, let's suffice by saying I touched my thumbs with my index fingers and brought my hands to waist level.
Now, where were we? Ah, yes... "Just clear your mind," I said.
"No, get past that," she said giving me a look that served as a warning that she was in no joking mood.
"Alright," I said, without mudras and with my eyes looking into her eyes. "Fix in your mind the concept of hot."
"No! No! No!" she said pointing a finger at me and shaking it back and forth. "I have eleven minutes before a conference call. Just spill it."
We Genomes are quick on the uptake and I dedeuced that she meant business. Although I hate to do such a thing, I divulged the unadorned (read boring) version of what I knew about the process. No dragons figured into it. No elves were involved. The mythic quest was only implied.
"Now make me one," she said, "hot like yours."
"How many ounces," I said.
"I want one just like yours," she said.
"Just like mine," I said and I meant it to give me a few seconds more to remember how I'd made the first one. It was a bust, of course, too much pressure.
"Just like mine?" I said. Another attempt to allow a few seconds more for magical inspiration. It sometimes works; not often I admit but sometimes.
"Exactly," she said.
Well, no time was wasted in getting everything laid out and filled up. Of course, I felt pressure pushing down on me; the kind of pressure that one feels when white-knighting it for the precious damozel. The kind of pressure that David Bowie and Freddy Mercury sang of in the 1980s; pressure that can bring a building down.
All I could do, under the circumstances, was appeal to my Higher Power, commend my soul to God, and leap into it.