A Word About Wives

At Mass on Sunday a few weeks ago we heard one of my favorite readings, Proverbs 31, describing the ideal wife: successful in business, taking care of her family, pretty much a 24/7/365 job.

In our 35th year, now, we do things like find each other’s hand as we start walking somewhere, finish each other’s sentences, say out loud what the other is thinking at that moment.

For the past five years, we’ve been driving to work together, and have even turned that into a comfortable routine. Kathy asks me about my day and gives me a chance to vent or describe something satisfying that happened. Then she tells me the latest about her office and which doctor or coworker made her mad that day or something funny a patient said or did.

When one of us is quiet, the other remarks on that, giving the taciturn one a chance to explain. Or not.

“How the hell can a person go to work in the morning,
Come home in the evening, and have nothing to say?”
(One of my favorite lines, from the John Prine song “Angel from Montgomery”, sung by Bonnie Raitt. Sometimes it seems to happen that way, though.)

For the past week she has been sicker than I ever remember. A terrible cold—the kind I usually get, but that she has somehow avoided all these years. She’s starting to come out of it now. I can tell by her breathing at night. I knew how sick she must have been when she said, “I’m not cookin’—you find your own dinner.” Sometimes she says that and then goes ahead and makes something anyway.

One day I looked at her and realized something. I said to her, “You don’t have a favorite color.” She said that’s right, I don’t. Who doesn’t have a favorite color?

She doesn’t care about clothes. She is content to wear nurses’ uniforms to work (it’s OK—she is a nurse after all) and come home and put on her jammies. She’ll wear the same jeans until they disintegrate, and is not interested in buying clothes for herself. Who doesn’t like to shop?

If we are in the car together, she has to drive. This bothered me when we were first married, but then we discovered why she’s always behind the wheel. She needs to be in control. You can’t be in control if you are a passenger, thus, she drives. She hates flying. Can you guess why? Right. She can’t drive the plane. Thankfully, this principle does not extend to cruise ships.

Which is good, because we leave tomorrow for our vacation. They have Internet connections on the ship, but I probably won’t use it. Too much like being at work. It’s going to be so sweet. Wait till she sees the cabin. That’s my last surprise for her on this trip. I’ve kidded her that we might only have a little window to look out at the water, when in reality, we will have just about the biggest balcony on the whole ship. After 35 years, she deserves an upgrade. I’m just glad she kept version 1.0 of me all this time.