What Fits

I’m right handed, he’s left.  It was one of the first things my mother noticed about Bill the day she met him.  As he signed his name, with love, on my grandmother’s 90th birthday card, my mom looked at me with a smile and said, “He’s left handed.”  Almost my whole family writes with their right hand.  From my sister to my father to my grandparents.  My aunts, my uncles, my cousins; every one of us is right handed.  But my mom?  Well, my mom is left.

“Hmm.”  I remember thinking. “I guess he is left handed.” 

I had known Bill six months at the time and I’d never noticed.  It had either never occurred to me, or just never mattered.  But right then, in that moment, with my mom seeing someone else writing the same way she did, and knowing that this person would one day join our family, I knew… Bill fit.   

Now when Bill and I work together, I stand to his right side, he stands to my left.  And it fits.  We assemble each sandwich by him loading on the bacon as I toss on the cheese.  He lays out the tomatoes as I drizzle on the sauce.  I grab one thing on the right, and he grabs another on the left, and it fits.  Any other combination; two lefties, two righties, if I were a lefty and he were a righty, wouldn’t work.  We’d both be reaching for the lettuce with no one grabbing for the onions.  Our lines would be crossed and our sandwiches would be tangled.  Where would we be then? 

One day, when Melt Sandwich Shops line the streets like Starbucks’ (insert ™ or © or ®  here… don’t sue me, Starbucks :), Bill and I won’t be the only one’s assembling our intricate sandwiches.  We’ll have a team of highly trained professionals that know to grab the broccoli rabe with their left hand and the slow roasted tomatoes with their right.   Because for us, well... that’s just what fits.