"Do you have your pocketknife?" I asked my husband, Steve, as I unwrapped masking tape from around a doorknob in our front entranceway. I was in the midst of painting, and a thin line of the peach paint had wormed its way beneath the tape and onto the knob. I wanted Steve's knife to scrape it off.

"I always have one," Steve said confidently as he dug into his jeans pocket and handed me a well-worn knife, its mother-of-pearl handle nicked and discolored with age. "I got this one from the Ebbert Seed Co. when I was a kid. It's where Dad bought his seed corn."

Teasingly I turned to him and said, "Is it possible for you to hand me a pocketknife without giving me its history?"

Steve's tendency to share the details of his various pocketknives is well-known in our family. Each has a unique history and a specific set of circumstances for when it is used.

There is the Old Timer, a sleek, small knife with a faux wood handle. It was a gift from one of our sons, and Steve keeps it in his coveralls for when working in the garage. "Old Timers are really good knives," he frequently reminds us.

And the Craftsman, a more formidable-looking knife with its black plastic handle. He carries it when wearing dress pants. It's lightweight and less bulky, he says. Its most talked-about feature is a locking blade that allows him to open and close it with one hand.

Although Steve's penchant for talking about his various pocketknives can be annoying at times, especially when I'm feeling testy, it is also endearing, one of those idiosyncrasies that one comes to expect — and is reassured by — in a spouse.

And after 32 years of marriage, Steve and I have a litany of things that permeate our interaction.

Uppermost is Steve's obsession with order, counterbalanced by my more laissez faire approach to running a household. For him, all things have a place, and he works to enforce that place: Canned goods should be arranged in the pantry by their content; dollar bills should be placed in a wallet in ascending order, each facing the same way; and car accessories — flashlights, notepads to record mileage, pencils and tools — are kept at a specified location in each car.

Just yesterday, as Steve and I were driving to the mall, he informed me he was changing the location of the pencil he keeps in my car.

"It's too hard to reach where it is now," he explained as he fished the pencil from a well below the emergency brake and placed it on a ledge under the glove box.

A new location? I thought. This is my car, and I don't even know where the old location is. Earlier in our marriage, Steve's remark might have evoked a less-than-pleasant response from me, but now I just smile. Put the pencil here or put the pencil there, it doesn't really matter.

At breakfast on the morning of our wedding anniversary several weeks ago, our 18-year-old daughter lightheartedly declared, "Thirty-two years. Wow! Just as passionate and in love as the day you were married."

Sitting next to the man who had just relocated the pencil in my car, I thought, less passion, but a lot more love.