They were as unalike as two people could be. He was a Type A personality. Detailed, driven, conscientious. Someone who always ‘coloured within the lines’. His office was pristine, his papers filed, his action lists planned, his desk uncluttered. She was a B. Laid back, disorganised, messy, disappearing for hours without a word. Her desk exemplified the ‘volcano theory’, anything important on top, everything on the floor, superfluous. She struggled to find her keyboard amid the chaos.
He was always the first to arrive. She was forever late. He bought her a whiteboard, but she wrote more items on it than were ever crossed off. She returned home with a car full of rose bushes for a garden he was yet to dig.
He tidied as he cooked, wiping down the stove and stacking the dishwasher. She left a culinary trail of destruction, dirty dishes piled in the sink and half-used packets strewn everywhere. He shopped quickly from a list, making careful note of the money he spent. She would browse for hours, arriving home at dusk with things they would never use.
Their parents had worried about a marriage between two such different people, but the relationship lasted more than fifty years. Unity of purpose was the key. They raised a loving family of five children who not only learned to celebrate the differences in others, but who are now passing that same life lesson on to their own children.
Not a bad result for a marriage between polar opposites.