My stacking of dishes, above.

I having the kind of dispute I have never had before in my life, one I could only have with Maria, and no one else.

Maria and I do not have conventional fights like sane and normal married couples have. We never fight about money or politics or chores. We give one another space, she rarely comes into my study, I rarely visit her studio, and then only when I knock or am invited.

Maria has her art, her work, her chores, I have my art, my work, my chores. Even though people try to communicate with each of us through the other, we don’t play any games like that. We have our own lives, our own space. To live otherwise would seem unhealthy to each of us.

But I think we are approaching a conflict, the kind one can only have with an artist, and Maria is an artist, day and night, seven days a week. She doesn’t see the world like normal people, she sees everything – grocery bags, food in the refrigerator, old bottles, shells and bones, and dishes in the sink – through the artistic prism, as different art forms.

Her world is in color, shapes and hues. She doesn’t see the world like the rest of us.

Normally, I love this about her, but this week, I had some issues.

The other day she posted a photo of some dishes in the kitchen drain that  I had stacked and a piece about my stacking on her blog.

She took one of her foo-foo artsy instant pictures and  wrote that she can always tell when I stack the dishes because, as she put it a bit haughtily, my stacking “is what seems to me haphazard,” adding “bowls up, cups on their side, dish facing front.”

On the other hand, she wrote, invoking an agrarian Mary Poppins, “I make an orderly and solid foundation of dishes, cups and bowls turned to drain, so I can stack them high a daily sculpture of form and balance.”

This stacking she suggested is a portrait of my disorganized and Dyslexic self, while her (occasional) stacking is a work of art and balance.

We exchanged a few indirect passive-aggressive comments about each other’s stacking, and then I re-read the piece she wrote about my stacking. This, I thought, shall not stand. We were working hard to be civil and indirect, but I think we are edging towards a full-blown argument about the stacking.

Could there be any other man ought there who has to defend the artistry of his dish stacking? I was about to say her stacking will never make it to the Met, but I held my tongue. She would just say she doesn’t care about being in the Met, and this is true.

This promises to be our best and most interesting fight ever, if it does on, and we have had a few doozies. But this time, she went too far. Maria is not what you would call domestic, she hates shopping and cooking, and generally refuses any form of cleaning other than clearing surfaces of our junk.

I know I am a portable chaos machine, but I take pride in my domesticity, my cooking, shopping and  steady hiring of people who can clean.

I suggested an apology, or at least a correction. I got  a chuckle.

What is interesting about Maria’s delicate assault on my stacking is what she left  out. Her stacking may be a daily sculpture of form and balance, but I could never begin to count the number of glasses, bowls and dishes who have broken, toppling off her lovely and tall stacks onto the porcelain sink, the floor and the kitchen counter.

All of these surfaces are harder than the Thrift store glasses she insists on buying and the stack of broken items from drainer could fill one of those massive dinner tables in the dining room of Downton Abbey.

Her stacks are so tall that the slightest disturbance or vibration – like breathing – will send one or two tumbling to the floor or crashing in the sink, by this time she is back in her studio designing a quilt. They might be a work of balance, but not of rational construction.

Now, I should make one thing clear, to be honest.

Maria could care less about dish stacking, it doesn’t make the top 100 of her priority lists. And as she sniffed yesterday, she could care even less about the glasses and dishes she breaks, predictably and with pride. Usually, she just laughs and says we need to scheduled another run to the Salvation Army.

“Who cares about some broken dishes?,” she fairly huffed, “we are talking about art.” I told her I was shocked by her characterization of my dish stacking (shown above) and saved my coup de grace for the end: “and,” I added, pausing for affect, “I don’t believe I have EVER broken a glass or a dish.”

So there, I thought a classic conflict between reality and art.

To this supposedly devastating retort, she just shrugged. And then laughed. What can I say to that?

I remembered what I ought to have recalled: there is no winning an argument with Maria, certainly not about her art, not about my dish stacking. She is half German, half Sicilian.

I remembered what an old man in Salem, N.Y. told me on the eve of my wedding. “Son,” he said, “remember the two most important words in any good and lasting marriage: “you could be right, dear.”

Maria, love of my heart, you could be right about the stacking. You are a stacking artist.

–– P.S. After reading this blog post, all she said to say was “I am right!” Moving on.