Let me make something perfectly clear: It’s not that Joe isn’t concerned about our children’s well-being, because he most certainly is. He would wrestle a hungry grizzly bear to protect them. It’s just that he isn’t nearly as afraid of blood, vomit, or infectious diseases as I am.
Just the other day, one of our neighbors had stacked half a dozen large metal crates by the street. Before their current stint as a roadside eyesore, these crates had been home to a large family of bearded dragons, which are giant alligator-lizards that feed on live crickets, roaches, mealworms, and occasionally their own tails. What had happened to the crates’ scaly former tenants was anyone’s guess, but precisely why their erstwhile habitats were bound for the landfill was not something I wished to explore.
“I’m going to go ask them if they’re giving those crates away,” Joe announced one afternoon, motioning toward the house next door.
“Why?” I asked, curious as to what he could possibly have in mind for our neighbor’s contaminated trash.
“I thought they might be fun for the girls,” he said.
“For our girls?” I asked incredulously. “To do what with exactly?”
“To play in,” he said.
“To play in?” I repeated stupidly, nearly gagging on the words. “Uh, no.”
“Uh, yes,” Joe replied, working the single brow arch like a madman and folding his arms across his chest.
“They’re filthy and disgusting,” I pointed out. “I am not letting our children near those cages.”
“You need to lighten up,” he answered me. “They’re going to love it. I’m asking.”
“You can’t just make a unilateral decision and then decide that it’s final,” I told him, getting angry.
“Why not?” he demanded. “You just did.”
“I said you can’t,” I reminded him with a satisfied smirk. At least he had the good sense to laugh.
“But seriously,” I added. “We’re not bringing those germinfested crates over here.”
“You are one stubborn, opinionated bitch,” Joe said to me, shaking his head.
“You should have realized that before you married me,” I replied.
“At Least You’re Not Married to Him”
He forgets our kids! We have three children, ages ten, nine, and six, and he sometimes forgets to get them from the bus when I cannot get there in time. One time I told him he had to be there in fifteen minutes, and he said, “Okay, no problem,” and thirty minutes later my phone was ringing to notify me that no one showed up at the bus to get them! He got caught up mowing the lawn or something to that effect.
MAGGIE
The very same man who feels as if he needs no wisdom or input from parenting professionals has a mantra that causes more arguments between us than an army of in-laws: “Experience is the greatest teacher,” he’ll say. I understand the “free-range parenting” concept in theory, and I’ll admit that more often than not I am guilty of leaning (hard) toward the overprotective end of the spectrum. But I’m not going to let my kids lay their tiny hands on a scalding appliance so that the impact of “the stove is very hot” will be magnified.
Joe thinks kids are hearty and resilient; I worry constantly about the countless hidden dangers that lurk like hungry sharks waiting to maim my babies. One menace in particular is a certain upstairs window in our home that opens—if I were to allow it to be opened, which I rarely do—directly onto the flat roof of our master bathroom below. In my fantasies, one day we will enclose the roof with a sturdy railing and swap the window for a nice French door and have ourselves a cozy little rooftop terrace from which, if the goddamned neighbors would ever bother to trim their trees, on a crystal-clear day we might enjoy a sliver of an ocean view. In the meantime, with its unprotected edges and a sheer twenty-foot drop on three sides, it’s an absolute off-limits death trap. I have spent years convincing our daughters that if they so much as leaned even an inch out of that window they would burst into spontaneous flames and perish on the spot. Because of this, they have never even considered asking for a roof pass, as it obviously wouldn’t be an option. Relieved, I confidently scratched kids climbing out onto the roof off my long worry list.
So you can imagine the shock and horror I felt the day I walked up the stairs and caught sight of the two of them out there dancing and laughing and twirling while their dad stood several frightening feet away, clapping and laughing and egging them on.
“What in God’s holy name are you doing?” I shrieked, hauling myself through the window and grabbing one of each of their tiny arms in a death grip.
“Oh, I was replacing a shingle and the girls wanted to come out and see what it was like,” Joe replied casually.
“It’s fun!” shouted one.
“We like it out here!” chimed in the other.
“Great idea,” I said sarcastically, shuffling the protesting pair back through the window to safety.
Later that night I tried to explain, rationally, how upset I was about the whole incident. “Honey, I think I did a really good job scaring the shit out of them about going near that window, and now you’ve completely ruined it,” I scolded.
“I was out there with them, Jenna,” he replied. “And I think it’s wrong to make them think their heads will fly off if they step out onto the roof. Besides, I told them that they are never to do it without me.”
“So you think they aren’t going to do it because you told them not to?” I demanded. “Children believe they are immortal and invincible and every last one of them defies their parents’ rules. It’s their job! Before it wasn’t a rule they were tempted to break to see what might happen, it was something they were utterly terrified of, and I liked it that way. A little healthy fear is good for them.”
“You have to let kids live,” Joe insisted, whipping out yet another of his hateful parenting clichés.
“Live is what I’m trying to make sure they do,” I spat.
“Sounds like a lot of fun,” he replied sarcastically.
“And just so we are clear, when they climb out there when you’re not around and fall off, it is all your fault.” I added, mentally etching kids climbing out on the roof back onto the damned worry list.
“At Least You’re Not Married to Him”
My husband of twenty-five years loves to debate and approaches many conversations as if there will be a winner and a loser. This is typical at his job. At home, he constantly asks questions that I can’t answer. For example, we are discussing one of our grown kids:
ME: Darling Daughter is going to do XXX.
DARLING HUBBY: Why would she do that? Has she thought of A? Has she considered B? Is she first going to do C?
ME: I don’t know.
DH: [ just asks the same questions again]
ME: You’re asking the wrong person.
DH: But why does she even want to do XXX?
ME: CALL YOUR DAUGHTER AND ASK HER!! I HAVE NO IDEA! And lose the demanding ’tude when you talk to her.
DH: I’m just worried about her, and I really want to know why she is going to do XXX.
ME: [putting my hand to my forehead and doing a Carnac the Magnificent impression] Obviously just to piss you off.
BETH
Before you got married, you might have made sure that your views on religion and finances and sex and politics were compatible with your future husband’s. But if you’re like me, you forgot to bring up a thousand or more seemingly benign possible dissimilarities like your take on whether or not it matters if SpongeBob SquarePants is gay and a child’s absolute right to an annual celebration of his or her nativity.
“What should we do for the girls’ birthdays this year?” I remember asking Joe one day. I am sure it was far too early in the year to be planning two hypothetical celebrations that wouldn’t happen for months, but I had meant it as more of a generic, input-gathering question than a strategic planning session.
“What are you talking about?” Joe replied blankly.
> “Their birthdays,” I said, drawing out the word birthdays with annoying slowness for emphasis. “Like, should we do big family-style barbecues or maybe something at a park? I guess we should ask them before we plan anything because they might want a slumber party or to take a bunch of friends bowling or something like that.”
“We had parties for both of them last year,” Joe stammered, confused.
“We sure did,” I said. “What’s your point?”
“Are you suggesting that we should throw a birthday party for each of them every single year?” he wanted to know.
“You’re not being serious, are you?” I asked. “Of course that’s what I’m suggesting! Kids have birthday parties every year that they have a birthday, which last time I checked was every year.”
“Who says?” he wanted to know. Joe defaults to “Who says?” a lot, and even if I could cough up a relevant biblical passage (“And then the Lord said to Little Sally, ‘Fear not, my child, for ye shall haveth a bouncy house and a strange balloon animal guy and a mountain of gifts to behold on each anniversary of thy creation . . .”), I know that it still wouldn’t satisfy him. Because “Who says?” isn’t actually a question, not even a rhetorical one. Translated literally into Joe-speak, it means I don’t give a flying flip what anyone else does because I think it is stupid and I’m not doing it, the end.
The thing is, our daughters aren’t even into the double digits yet, which means we still have the bras, braces, dating, driving, drinking, boyfriends, birth control, cell phones, and college debates ahead of us. These years will not be easy on any of us, I fear, but I am confident that my marriage can survive them because Joe and I agree that our children are the most important thing in the world to us. When we are at a frustrating future impasse, we have vowed to remind each other that our daughters’ happiness, safety, and general well-being will always come first. We can agree on this because everyone knows that blood is thicker than water. It’s also much harder to get out of the carpet.
CHAPTER TWENTY
See? It Really Could
Be Worse
All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart.
• OGDEN NASH •
My husband, I am proud to say, has a sixth sense. He does. He knows unequivocally, without the faintest shadow of a doubt, that my fucking shoes are going to be the death of me. Interestingly I do not own just one pair of poisonous footwear. Pretty much all of them but my tennis shoes and hiking boots fall into the lethal-shoe category, and really he’s only expressing his immeasurable concern for my well-being, not accusing me of putting my very life at risk with my vain desire to be slightly more fashionable than the gal we buy our avocados from at the farmer’s market. Nevertheless, I have to hear over and over how violently he disapproves of my sandals/slingbacks/slip-ons/ stilettos. Because he is clairvoyant, okay?
Apparently the mentally elite are drawn to their own kind, because Joe also insists that I have a unique superpower of my own. You see, I can jinx things. Stop! I’m serious. By merely taking the time to verbally acknowledge some blessing—“Wow, what a beautiful day! I’m glad that wind finally died down,” or “Can you believe the girls have been playing quietly for two solid hours?”—I automatically flip an invisible switch that powers up some mysterious and malicious force of nature that will put a swift and ugly end to the stroke of luck in question.
“It’s supposed to be gorgeous this weekend,” I’ll remark casually.
“Aw great, you jinxed it,” Joe will accuse, shaking his head sadly and looking up at the sky to scan for the thunderclouds that he expects to appear at any minute.
“I didn’t jinx anything,” I laugh. (Well, I used to laugh, when I still found it amusing that someone could actually believe that another person—let alone the person they chose to marry—could beget misery without even so much as a nose twitch. Now being called the devil incarnate on a daily basis is just fucking annoying.) “I’m appreciating our good fortune. How can that be bad?”
“Nope, you jinxed it,” he’ll insist. “Thanks a lot.”
At least you’re not married to him, right? Or any of the dozens of guys brutally affectionately immortalized on the next many, many pages. When you’re done, go ahead and count your blessings. Despite what Joe would have you believe, it won’t jinx anything. Probably.
“At Least You’re Not Married to Them”
I can’t stand the way he sneezes. They are really loud, really dramatic, and so out-of-the blue, they frighten me. I’ve lived through earthquakes that haven’t scared me as much as one of his sudden, deafening nasal-passage clearings. I’ve learned to live with them, even though I’m completely irritated and unnerved by his each and every involuntary expectoration. But here’s the big oy: Now that my son is fifteen years old and manly, his sneezes have started to rival his father’s, decibel-wise. I pray that my future daughterin-law has more mettle and patience than I do.
—Nancy
What’s with the early morning farts as they are peeing? Sometimes I ask myself how I could love a person who pees and farts at the same time.
—Robin
He is a very messy eater! Even if he’s dressed up in a suit and tie. In fact, at the last function we attended a couple of months ago, after a few drinks he ate his prime rib with reckless abandon. Fortunately, the lights in the room were dim and everyone was drinking. The next morning when I was packing, I was shocked to see his clothes looking like a two-year-old had eaten in them. He had food all over his tie—I think he dipped it in his plate. His pants were covered from front to back. I had to soak his white shirt in Biz. I made him take them to the dry cleaners because I was too embarrassed, and we still haven’t picked them up. I wonder what they thought.
—Karin
He will wear a nice pair of slacks with the most worn, loose, disgusting socks you can imagine. Or he will pair super-old white athletic socks—you know, the ones that have turned dingy whitish gray and no longer have any elastic in them and may even have visible holes—with a decent pair of shorts and Pumas.
—Eileen
He has a tic—he clears his throat all the time, even while he is eating—that drives me crazy! He does it until it hurts or he is hoarse and cannot stop. It is maddening.
—Laurie
My husband completely lacks the ability to plan ahead. I’m not talking about planning a vacation or even a nice dinner out. I’m talking about anything that should happen beyond this particular moment in time. He can read the news, watch baseball, totally oblivious to the fact that the kids aren’t dressed, the dogs haven’t been fed, you know, all the usual daily occurrences that he seemingly cannot predict. He’ll say he’ll be home promptly at 6:00, and then after I have employed my super investigative powers of questioning, he’ll admit he has a conference call at 5:45. Like he can magically transport himself home in seconds. I think I’ve figured this one out, though. He’ll do anything I ask so as long as I just treat him like an entry-level employee, and all is well.
—Donna
It trips my liberal do-gooder guilt switch and drives me nuts that my wonderful husband won’t use things up and instead will open/get out a new [roll of toilet paper, loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, etc.] while the other one still has lots left. When it leads to things spoiling and going to waste, it really bugs me, but I know he’s not going to change.
—Rose
It never fails . . . I am scrambling in the morning to put myself together in a reasonable fashion and get to work on time and it’s like he has radar for what I’m going to do next or where I’m going and he gets in my way. If I see he’s left the bathroom, I try to slip in and get my makeup on and my teeth brushed in privacy, but no sooner do I have paste on the brush than he walks in and starts brushing his teeth! Or I’ll be reaching into the glass cupboard to get a coffee cup down and he’ll stand right beside me and reach into the cupboard for something else instead of asking me to pass him something. No matter ho
w hard I try to reverse my morning routines from his, it’s almost like he’s my mirror image.
—Grace
When he eats soup or stew, he siphons off all of the liquid first with his spoon first, then eats what’s left.
—Lisa
When I walk into the kitchen after he has unloaded the dishwasher, my mind instantly starts playing that Sesame Street song, “One of these things is not like the other . . . one of these things just doesn’t belong.” I have found potato peelers in with the forks, measuring cups with drinking glasses, and cooking utensils shoved in miscellaneous drawers. He’s not mentally challenged, either.
—Kandis
My husband dresses like he’s still in college. He wears the same T-shirts he wore when we were dating (almost ten years ago). I can’t get him to dress like an adult and it drives me nuts.
—Deilia
It drives me crazy when my husband takes credit for something I said or did. If I say something funny or do something amusing, he will tell the story to friends with him in the starring role. He doesn’t do this all of the time, but he’s done it enough so that it is annoying. I don’t even think it’s on purpose, so maybe I should be happy that he thinks of us as one!
If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon Page 24