Yesterday my husband couldn’t find something in the refrigerator.
Shocker: It was right up front, almost touching his corneas.
I don’t understand why this is a thing that seems to span class and education level.
Nearly every wife I have talked to says this is her same exact story.
I cannot count the number of times I have had to direct him to some ketchup he says doesn’t exist, or some large, brightly labeled box of Band-Aids as he then acts awestruck, and swears it wasn’t there when he just checked for it.
I think a whole lot of marital problems could be solved, actually, if mothers of boys made a point to buy them a big ol’ stack of “I Spy” books, and patted their sons on the back, and told them to go try to find the paperclip.
I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen this man make himself food in our nearly twenty year marriage.
He loves to ask me if I can “help him make something,”
which really means that he wants me to just do it all for him.
Justin cannot, for the life of him, remember a song lyric.
The ones he ends up singing make absolutely no sense, and have zero meaning.
No matter how many times I’ve told him it’s “I’ve got the moves like Jagger,” for example,
he will still belt out that he’s got to move his jacket.
He loves to lay down across the entire couch on his face and fall asleep immediately, loudly snoring, making it impossible for anyone else to sit down, or to hear the television show they were just watching.
If asked if he’d like to, perhaps, move his act to the bedroom,
every single time he will mumble that he wasn’t even sleeping, because he’s
“not even that tired.”
There are some days when it feels like he’s made it his life-mission to annoy me from the second he walks through the door. Chief Annoyer – His title.
I don’t really know what woman likes their ear blown into forcefully while they try to cook dinner.
Last night, it had all begun to fester;
Like, if I had to help him find one more thing, I might just rig it with a bear trap.
I called the family to come to the table, and we all sat around enjoying our turkey curry,
and talking. It was regular chit-chat, nothing out of the ordinary,
but then he brought up the subject of St. Patrick’s Day coming.
St. Patrick’s Day, for our family, has always been special.
Not only am I of Irish decent, with a family name of “Murphy,” and an Irish great-grandfather that was even born on the day, but – most notably – that is the day that I met Justin over 20 years ago in a tiny pub downtown, set-up by a mutual friend, blindly.
We have always considered it the anniversary of our whole family.
Before I knew it, he started recounting how he had shown up to a group gathering there, starving, and – in what I now say should have been a red flag –
nearly immediately looked at my plate and asked if I was going to finish it.
He walked me home that night after hours of talking,
even after finding out I already had a three year old daughter.
I’ll never forget how he put his arm around me, and I thought it felt very forward,
but also warm, and comforting; Like he saw what was missing.
Three days later, and we began officially dating, brought together by a night in a pub, where a cute boy showed up in a backwards baseball cap, and showed interest in me.
The fact that our last name is now Green is not a touch that is lost on me.
I remember every moment, right down to the music, and the amber lighting.
We ended up sitting there last night reminiscing about how we met through that whole dinner.
In that moment, I saw a lifetime of stories looking back across the table at me.
Our children listened, and shook their heads, trying to act appalled, but I noticed how their eyes sparkled.
By the time I stood to clear the table, those feelings about him not finding things had begun fading, replaced by the feelings from remembering the way that we had found each other.
I smiled at the sink, slightly, realizing this is just the way with marriage –
There is good, and bad.
There are pleasant surprises, and frustrations;
How it’s sometimes rare to tell the love story out loud, but so easy to list the irritations.
I think sometimes it’s important to recount the story together.
It works as a shield to ward off the bad lyrics.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
