Relative Something

A few weeks ago my wife’s father stopped by the house and dropped off an envelope with some simple instructions for me. Since Cyndie is in Boston, I was to take care of depositing a couple checks into her account and then let her know she needs to write a check of her own and get it delivered. Easy enough.

He said it wasn’t an urgent task, but an important one. I didn’t want to overlook it, so my goal was to just take care of it right away. How hard is it to deposit a check? Well, to start, Cyndie and I have separate accounts at different banks. We have both of our names on each of the accounts, but I have no idea what her checking account number is.

Over FaceTime, I brought up the subject and Cyndie said I could just look in the drawer in our desk where the checks are and I could get a deposit slip out of the back of one of her books of checks. Sounded easy enough to me. Consider it a done deal.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy. I rummaged through the many boxes of checks, and found old ones for each of our children, one from my bank account, and then a box full of old blank registers, with calendars on them now long out of date. There was nothing from Cyndie’s account.

Days passed, and Cyndie and I failed to connect. I figured I could look for an old bank statement of hers for the account information. There should be a file-full around here somewhere. But the sad truth is, Cyndie and I manage things very differently, and after looking everywhere I could imagine, I found no bank statements for her checking account. They may be here, but there are a lot of boxes and files of paperwork that Cyndie saves, and I can’t seem to find the needle in the haystack.

Next, I emailed a request for her account number, but that went unanswered, probably lost in her over-loaded inbox. After days of failing to reach her using FaceTime in the evenings, I made a point to wake up early and try to catch her before she left for work. She was kind enough to pick it up, but only to tell me she was late and had to dash out the door. She told me she would text the account number.

This had already become embarrassingly overcomplicated. All I wanted was to take care of it right away so it wouldn’t drag on or be forgotten. I waited for her text. I waited two days. How long does it take to send a text? I left a voice message on her phone. I must have sounded desperate. As I was falling asleep after that second day, my cell phone vibrated to an incoming text message. It said she had mailed it, and she was sorry I was so worried about this.

I wasn’t worried, but I sure was frustrated. I checked the mail that next day. Nothing. I suppose it could have been delayed a day. I checked the day after that. Still nothing. Is this some kind of test for me? When I finally got a chance to speak with Cyndie by the end of the week, she confirmed she did mail a deposit slip and blank check, but not till the day before. She had carried it in her purse for a couple of days until she found a mail box.

I checked Saturday’s mail. Nothing. Monday, nothing. Tuesday, nothing. How hard can this be? To complicate things, I had forgotten that Cyndie told me she was traveling to Florida for a conference. I couldn’t figure out why I was totally unable to reach her for several days. I was about ready to give up, but each day, I’d check the mailbox, just in case.

Yesterday, I finally got what I was after. To add insult to injury, the letter that Cyndie waited two days to mail ultimately got mangled and torn open by a Post Office sorting machine. The deposit slip and check with corners missing, and the torn envelope, were put into a larger envelope and, to the Post Office’s credit, at long last, they delivered the items into my mailbox.

After bringing in the mail, I went right back out the door, drove to the bank, and made that damn deposit.