I have known my husband since 1994, maybe 1995. Nearly 30 years. There are so many reasons I married him. So many reasons I continue to love him. But I am not sure I really saw him, parts of him until recently. I have been on a path of self-discovery on the deepest levels since retirement and what I have found is that as I see myself more clearly so I see him. He has always been different in terms of his thinking. And he's easily dismissed because he has no need to jam his thinking down your throat. We are two biscuits smothered in gravy in that regard. For example, he has done some wild financial things that our accountant and financial advisor are awed by. And yet when he offers counsel to his daughter before her bankruptcy, she responds, "I got this, Dad!" It's easy to forget the backwoods Mainer taught mathematics at the state university. I have learned to value his soft-spoken words as I gaze at our portfolio and participate in conversations where our advisors ask him for advice. He doesn't just think outside the box, he thinks from inside the triangle, outside the circle and under the garage. Naturally. Take our downstairs bathroom which we were forced into renovating because our pipes burst some six months ago. We've struggled with the process, the color, the cabinetry because our house is one-of-a-kind, literally hand-built by my husband. We want to maintain the character, warmth and uniqueness of our post-and-beam home. We want to lift ourselves into the current century by brightening up the home he built to be solar-efficient long before the impact of climate change loomed like a dark cloud. On our back porch are antique wooden ladders that frame our deck, which he built. I thought he was nuts when he brought them home. He picked them up free, on the side of the road, from an old Mainer. Our friends tell us we could be the feature article in DownEast Home magazine. Another said she'd pay to come hang on our deck with the handmade furniture, retrofitted fire-propane fire pit, cafe lights swinging above. Even though I think of myself as the artist in the family, my husband's more bold. As we paint and tile the bathroom, in pretty bland colors, I default to the same placement of the antique clawfoot tub and new vanity. He wants to shift it all around. And now I listen. I feel I get him. I see and understand him and value his quirky, off-the-jungle-path ideas as I come to embrace my own. And it makes me love him even more. And maybe love myself more, too. Or at least understand myself
and him better. On this beautifully chilly fall morning with the tile ready for grout and my constant chatter in my indecisive head about the neutral paint color slapped on the bathroom walls I wonder if I shouldn't send back the shiny new vanity that's on it's way. Maybe I should reconsider my husband's idea of using an old chest of drawers for our bathroom cabinet. A vanity I could paint orange one year and pink the next! All good things to muse over as I transform the white clawfoot tub into a colorful art piece, encouraged on, always, by my husband who sometimes sets me free!
Comments
Post a Comment