He still couldn’t spell “necessary.” Eleven years together, a graduate degree, a job that required regular written reports, and the man simply could not, under any circumstances, spell the word “necessary” correctly on the first attempt.
It had become, over the years, one of Wren’s favorite things about him.
“It’s two C’s and one S,” she told him now, looking over his shoulder at the email he was drafting. “You’ve done one C and two S’s again.”
“I know the rule. My hands don’t know the rule.”
“It’s been eleven years.”
“And yet.” He didn’t even seem embarrassed anymore, just resigned, the way you get resigned to a permanent, harmless quirk in someone you love. “Some words just don’t stick.”
It would have been easy, she supposed, to find this tedious after over a decade — to wish, even briefly, that he’d simply learn the word and remove the recurring small annoyance of checking his emails before he sent them. But she’d come instead to feel a strange tenderness toward it. This one persistent flaw in an otherwise capable, competent man. Proof that even after years together, he still had small, specific, entirely human limitations that hadn’t smoothed away with familiarity.
People aren’t meant to become perfect the longer you know them, she thought. They’re meant to become familiar — including the parts that never quite resolve.
“Fixed it,” he said, turning the screen toward her. “Necessary. Two C’s.”
“You looked it up, didn’t you.”
“I looked it up.” He sent the email. “Some battles aren’t worth the eleven-year fight.”
She kissed the top of his head, fond and amused in the specific way reserved for the people whose flaws you’ve stopped trying to fix and started simply loving.
“I’ll always check your spelling,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “That’s sort of the whole arrangement.”
✦ Today’s Reflection
What small, harmless flaw in your partner have you come to feel fond of rather than frustrated by?
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Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 
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