For three whole nights.
My husband came home late last night after leaving early Thursday morning to spend the long weekend in the mountains. He went with three of our best friends (the husbands, because the wives stayed home to read, parent, and binge-watch documentaries) to the mountains to finish clearing the property where they are building a mountain house.
This is probably a good time to mention that we don’t spend much time apart. I go on a girls’ trip with my girlfriends every year or so for a few nights, but my husband has only been away from us one night in the past… 4 years? Maybe 15? I don’t know.
But back to my story. I’ve been here discovering just how much of our life quietly runs because of my husband. People always joke about weaponized incompetence, but I’d like to introduce you to me: Tiffany, the present opposite of weaponized incompetence, called accidental overdependence. Yes. Hi. I’m the problem; it’s me.
Want an example? Yes, you do.
I have never made a pot of coffee. For 25 years, my husband has made every pot for me. It’s not because I can’t read directions or operate heavy machinery. I am perfectly capable of measuring coffee grounds (with LOVE). But from day one, he’s just always made the coffee before we go to bed so it starts brewing in the morning without us being present. And he pours my first cup and brings it to me.
Yes, I understand some might consider this spoiled. That’s because it is. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But Thursday night, I stood in front of our coffee maker like I was a first-time pilot in a really big plane who’d never seen an instrument panel before, and I fought to remember the instructions he gave me during our lesson that morning while silently kicking myself in the ass for deciding I’d remember and didn’t need to write them down. So many buttons. So many lights. There were beeps. I was overwhelmed…but I figured it out, and I immediately felt a rush of relief.
Until I looked over at the dishwasher and remembered I had to turn that motherfucker on, too. If I thought the coffee maker had too many buttons, it looks like a newborn baby compared to the dishwasher.
Listen. I load the dishwasher throughout the day. I even unload it on occasion (not often, because my husband tends to unload it first thing in the morning, because it runs at night). But I’ve never actually started it. My husband does that every night. And it was one more thing he had to teach me how to do with a dishwasher tutorial.
Yes, you read that correctly. A dishwasher tutorial. At the tender age of 42…with less than three months until I’m 43 (oh, stop. I figured out how to change a trash bag by myself, so I’m not a complete moron).
But listen. You don’t even want me to get started on bedtime. Not with the kids. They’re fine. They tuck themselves into their beds, and I make the rounds to each of their bedrooms to kiss them goodnight and tell them I love them. I’m a professional at that kind of bedtime. It’s the other kind of bedtime I’m talking about. Every single night before bed, I realized that there’s apparently an entire security shift that happens after I’m already in bed.
Someone has to make sure every single one of our 300 doors is locked. That every single one of our many lamps is turned off. That every single one of my daily lit candles is blown out. The garage door is closed. The alarm is turned on. Our house doesn’t tuck itself in each night, I’ve learned. Who knew? Not me, that’s who.
The funny thing, though, is I’ve never really paid much attention to these things because they’ve just happened for the past 25 years. Like waking up each morning knowing someone else has already thought about making my day just a little bit easier before I’ve even opened my eyes. Because marriage is not about the grand gestures and the big moments. It’s about every selfless thought that ensures the other person in the marriage feels loved, cared for, and safe. Sometimes, that’s as simple as 25 years of quietly doing the same little things over and over again without an ounce of recognition or the other person even realizing that they’re being cared for in those moments.
But let’s not get carried away.
While I missed my husband terribly – I’ll never be the kind of wife who enjoys being away from her husband for more than a few hours – we are still talking about the same man who cannot see his car fob when it’s not on the tray on his nightstand because it’s sitting next to his tray on the nightstand. The same man who has to ask me where something is in our house because it’s not in the exact same place he last put it (because it’s six inches to the left because someone else used it after him and put it there). The same man who can breathe silently all day long, but the moment his eyes close at night, his body forgets that breathing is a fucking QUIET ACTIVITY.
He does occasionally make me crazy. He occasionally drives me nuts. I occasionally wonder how someone so motherfucking intelligent can be so dense. But I can’t use the coffee maker, dishwasher, or change a trash bag without wanting to cry. So, no judgement here. I think we’re even.
This weekend reminded me of a few things:
- If I have to be away from my husband, it’s far easier for me when I’m the one gone
- I’m not an idiot, but I don’t care to learn new things
- I can take care of myself, but I don’t have to
- Marriage is not 50/50
- Marriage is 100/100
Sometimes, it’s 100/0 because you don’t even notice the ways in which everyone naturally falls into doing the things that they do best (I make sure our house is decorated beautifully and tastefully, and Craig changes the trash bags). Sometimes love looks like bringing your wife her coffee every morning for 25 years or being the last person to go up and downstairs, checking all the locks on all the doors and setting the alarm, and blowing out candles. Sometimes it looks like being able to see key fobs that are invisible to your spouse because he has tunnel vision. Sometimes it looks like not holding a pillow over your husband’s face in the middle of the night and smothering him while he’s breathing so loudly in his sleep that you wonder if this is what a tornado ripping through your neighborhood sounds like.
You know. The little things.
Last night, though…last night I was more than happy to hand the dishwasher and all its petty bullshit back to my husband. I was more than happy to retire from my temporary position as Director of Evening Security.
But I did program the coffee.
However, this morning I happily accepted my cup of coffee from my husband and retired from my barista position. Some habits are worth keeping.
Tiffany Raiford 