Yesterday, I was digging through boxes in the garage. The boxes were covered in dust. I found important things I didn’t even know I owned. A fondue pot, for instance.
I found our wedding photos, too. I had to sit down to look at them. In one photo, I’m wearing a tux. I’m cutting a cake while the woman on my arm is laughing, holding her belly. Young Me is watching her. I remember exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking the same thing I’m thinking now: “I like making this woman laugh.”
Easier said than done. She doesn’t know how to fake laugh. It’s not in her. In fact, she doesn’t laugh unless the joke is worth doubling over. Whereupon she’ll hold her stomach like she’s going to have an accident. It’s great.
I also found a certificate in one of the boxes. The thing was covered in plastic, with my name written on it. My college degree. I was a grown man when I went to college. It took me 11 years to finish. The only reason I completed was because this woman believed I could. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m her sidekick or if she is mine. Either way, she is a woman who does too much. She works too hard, she loves harder. She has quirks, too. And nobody knows them like me.
For example: she cannot fall asleep without an assortment of machinery. In her arsenal is a foam wedge (for her lower back); a heating pad (for her cold nature); a mouthguard (she grinds her teeth); a sound machine (apparently, I snore); earplugs (apparently, I am not an amateur snorer); an eye mask (to shield her face from my professional snoring); and a woven synthetic blanket (for suffocating husbands).
More about her: she writes thank-you notes for every occasion including the onset of daylight-saving time. She likes her coffee fixed with sugar and two quarts of cream. She is a Scorpio—this means she suffers from clinical road rage.
We do not have children. Her maternal love must go somewhere. So she loves animals. She speaks fluent dog. She also speaks feral cat. We spend a lot of money on strays. She will risk her life to save a turtle on the highway.
She is a certified math teacher. This math teacher pulled me through high-school equivalency courses and turned a redheaded dropout into an educated man.
She is a chef. Sixteen ounces of her homemade pimento cheese is worth driving 1,200 miles. Her chicken salad should be on the Pope’s bucket list. And Lord, her biscuits.
Her granny died before imparting the sacred biscuit recipe, but somehow my wife figured it out. She lets the dough ferment in the fridge. That’s the secret.
Last night, I showed my wife old photographs, and an academic certificate with my name on it. I told her what I just told you. I thanked her for all she’s done for me. For making an orphan feel like somebody.
“You give me too much credit,” she said.
She’ll never know just how much credit she deserves until we reach the Other Side.
Until then I will continue loving her with all my heart.
