FORT WAYNE, IN—Gavin Thorndike, a 58-year-old high school teacher, husband, and father of two, ran through his typical morning routine on Monday morning before going into work. He drank his black coffee before stepping into the hot shower: the seven minutes of his day in which he comes within a glimpse of what contentment is like.
Thorndike, who has worked for the school district since 1992, disrobed and stepped into the surrounding warmth and solitude of the shower, allowing his thoughts to roam freely--an experience he has never come close to having with any other person with whom he has been acquainted in his life.
Mrs. Victoria Thorndike, 54, married Mr. Thorndike in 1983 out of fear that she had no better prospects. At its best moments, her relationship with her husband could be described as amiable, as she does not share his interests in old coins, professional hockey, or the Western movie genre. Of her husband, she said, "Gavin's a decent man. He keeps the car full of gas, so I guess that's worth sticking around for. He doesn't hit me, either, so that's something."
The best affection Thorndike can expect from his wife is a half-hearted peck on the cheek when he returns home from work: a routine that has not changed in any discernible way since the birth of their first child, Haley, in 1985. Of the birth, Mrs. Thorndike explained, "Yes, our relationship changed then. It went from a sort of mutual agreement to a contractual obligation. I knew we were in it for the long haul then." Mrs. Thorndike, who has never once uttered a word of praise or gratitude to her husband, and certainly never given him the feeling of serenity and embrace that he gets from hot water flowing over his balding scalp and naked body each morning, now does all within her power to avoid openly resenting her husband.
Thorndike's children have never given him anything close to the tranquility he feels while closing his eyes and breathing in deeply the warm, humid steam from the shower, catching just a glimpse of inner peace before stepping out into the cold world again. Both his daughter, Haley, and son, Carlson, 14, regard their father as little more than a guardian. "Dad's alright, sure." said Carlson, who hasn't exchanged more than mere pleasantries with his father since they attended a hockey game together in 2014, and has certainly never taken him into his warm arms to shelter him from the stress and woes of the unforgiving world as his shower does.
Haley Thorndike, who works as an administrative assistant at a local pharmaceutical office, once embraced her father tightly and told him she missed him after he had returned from a conference out of town, but now admits that it was only because he had brought her a small stuffed pony as a gift. "Yeah, I was like four, I think," she adds.
Thorndike's shower, which asks nothing of the aging man but a weekly cleaning, and regular maintenance of the water heater, assures Thorndike that it is available at any moment, and it will never judge his singing, his recent weight gains, or the strange hairs growing from virtually every place but his head: an offer that literally no human being has ever made him.
After his day of work, Thorndike came home to find his wife nagging him about cutting the grass, his daughter asking for a new cell phone, and his son complaining about having an out-of-date game console. Thorndike immediately spilled a beer on himself and said, "Oh, will you look at that - I guess I'd better get showered off."