Love and Ear Hair

Hey, Mrs. MMM!  Look up from your iPad for a second and look across the room. See that guy sitting there, watching Survivor, with the laptop permanently affixed to his thighs?  Yeah, him. Look closer…closer. OK – not that close. Now ask yourself:

When did that happen?

Sure, he still has a full head of hair, but it’s going gray. And what’s with the hair on his ears?

Granny glasses on his nose? Seriously?

Remember back when you were new? I’ll bet you never would have guessed that after five pregnancies, he would have gained more weight than you.

How about the habitual clatter of the keyboard? You probably never dreamed that he would be sharing your life together online with complete strangers.

Remember when you were both young, and used to go dancing? Granted, there is still some entertainment value watching him get up and walk across the room after he has been sitting too long. The soundtrack of youth has been replaced by a chorus of creaks, pops and groans.

And the snoring. Excuse me? I’m pretty sure they didn’t mention that in the temple.

Nope. He is no longer the fit, energetic, handsome young man that you married. The power he now wields comes mainly from the Mountain Dew he consumes, and the remote control he wields so skillfully. Those idealized dreams of youth are now partially buried by the everyday grind of reality.

Who knew he would have his moments of irritability where he would overreact to the dumbest thing? Where did that come from? Shouldn’t he have a better handle on that after a half-century?

Now, take a minute and listen.  What do you hear? Beyond the TV and the keyboard? Exactly – two boys fighting. It hasn’t always been the same two boys, but it has been consistent. Since your daughter grew up and left, you have been outnumbered by boys. Remember, your husband is responsible for those chromosomes.

What do you smell?  Don’t worry – the house smells clean, and the bedroom smells a bit of lavender, but underneath there is a different odor. Can you place it? I’ll give you a hint: There is a reason that you should not buy your husband fuzzy slippers for Christmas.  Lessons learned.

Now look at your husband again. He’s looking at you over the top of his glasses with his eyebrows raised inquisitively.

“What are you thinking?” He asks.
“Nothing.” You lie.

He looks for a moment longer, shrugs his shoulders, and goes back to his typing/Survivor watching.

Are you curious what he was thinking when he was looking at you?  I’ll tell you.

He adores you. He would rather be here with you than with any other person in the world. His world revolves around you, and he likes it like that.

Twenty-six years of marriage, and he is not tired of you – just the opposite. He doesn’t need, or desire a “Boy’s Night Out.” He doesn’t want any “Me Time.” He wants to be with you, even if it is just a quiet evening at home. He is in it for the long haul. Sometimes in the middle of the day he will be at work, and feel some sort of homesickness.

He is planning on spending forever with you. Eternity. That’s what you both signed up for, right? Not only that, he wants you to want to spend eternity with him, too.

Remember when you got married? You both thought you had reached the “pinnacle” of love and happiness. Isn’t that just adorable? Nothing but experience can ever teach how love grows, and expands, to encompass everyone attached to this union. What started as two is now eight, and will continue to grow. Star-crossed newlyweds have no comprehension of what is possible – it has to be lived to be understood. Or believed.

What else is he thinking? He still thinks that you are beautiful. One of the benefits of encroaching farsightedness is that he can’t really see any “fine lines or wrinkles” that you fret about. And when he does see them, he doesn’t care. Your face makes him smile. And your tears break his heart. He doesn’t want you to hurt – physically or emotionally. He wants to take care of you, and take care of your heart.

He still watches you sleep, but doesn’t like you to catch him because he knows it makes you feel insecure. He likes to watch your mouth as you talk. He is amazed that a good kiss from you can still make his head spin. He likes to spoil you with financially irresponsible surprises, but only acts on those ideas occasionally. He figures you would rather have electricity, and a home.

He is painfully aware of his shortcomings, and idiosyncrasies. He is amazed that you love him anyway. He is grateful that you don’t dwell on the whole list of things that are wrong with him, or that he does wrong. Including the list at the top of the page. Your patience is saintly.

When he thinks about it, which he doesn’t do often enough, he is grateful to God for finding a way to line up your individual life dominos so that both of you would collide at exactly the right place, at exactly the right time. It is so easy to look back now and see His hand in all of it.

Above all, he loves you, and is pretty confident that you know it. Along that same line, he knows that you love him, and that makes it all worthwhile.

You are already eternal companions, cuddled up in the present, happily waiting for the eternity.

The Grapefruit Syndrome

by Lola B. Walters  (Link)

My husband and I had been married about two years—just long enough for me to realize that he was a normal man rather than a knight on a white charger—when I read a magazine article recommending that married couples schedule regular talks to discuss, truthfully and candidly, the habits or mannerisms they find annoying in each other. The theory was that if the partners knew of such annoyances, they could correct them before resentful feelings developed.

It made sense to me. I talked with my husband about the idea. After some hesitation, he agreed to give it a try.

As I recall, we were to name five things we found annoying, and I started off. After more than fifty years, I remember only my first complaint: grapefruit. I told him that I didn’t like the way he ate grapefruit. He peeled it and ate it like an orange! Nobody else I knew ate grapefruit like that. Could a girl be expected to spend a lifetime, and even eternity, watching her husband eat grapefruit like an orange? Although I have forgotten them, I’m sure the rest of my complaints were similar.

After I finished, it was his turn to tell the things he disliked about me. Though it has been more than half a century, I still carry a mental image of my husband’s handsome young face as he gathered his brows together in a thoughtful, puzzled frown and then looked at me with his large blue-gray eyes and said, “Well, to tell the truth, I can’t think of anything I don’t like about you, Honey.”

Gasp.

I quickly turned my back, because I didn’t know how to explain the tears that had filled my eyes and were running down my face. I had found fault with him over such trivial things as the way he ate grapefruit, while he hadn’t even noticed any of my peculiar and no doubt annoying ways.

I wish I could say that this experience completely cured me of fault finding. It didn’t. But it did make me aware early in my marriage that husbands and wives need to keep in perspective, and usually ignore, the small differences in their habits and personalities. Whenever I hear of married couples being incompatible, I always wonder if they are suffering from what I now call the Grapefruit Syndrome.