#120: Base

Grace had said in passing while they ate breakfast that it had been ten years since they moved to town.

Time had gone by so quickly. But it was as he sat and waited for their usual Friday night pizza orders that the absurdity struck him.

He had never been one to stay in one place for a long time. Nor keep people in his life for very long. So how did he remain married for something like fifteen years, and to remain in the same house, sleep in the same bed, take his morning shit on the same toilet? Where was his itchy feet?

Was it simply a product of growing older? Of having children?

Or had he been in a coma, so to speak?

Gus was still making pizzas, and it seemed to Peter the few times he spoke to him, he had no ambition other than to make pizzas.

Gus reached up to grab another large pizza box. The large stack of empty boxes was over two metres tall.

Peter counted thirty-two boxes. That wasn't even a year's worth of pizzas he alone had eaten. Multiply that by the ten years he'd been coming here, and the number of boxes he'd consumed would fill his lounge room. Add in Grace's small vegetarian boxes, and the kids, and they'd be able to fill the entire house with the pizza boxes they'd eaten.

Was that how he should mark his life?

He could hear Grace's voice in his head. He should measure his life by her love, and the love of their children. That’s what made a life worthwhile.

Peter couldn't help think of those things as toppings on what was becoming a very boring base.