Long ago, sometime around the end of 1994, I met my husband for the first time. He was in my office. I was taking his picture. That was my job. No, I did not work for a magazine with a brown cover, I was making his crew I.D. as he was just signing on to work on the ship I was on, the SS Seabreeze.
I cannot say that I knew at that moment that we would end up together, but I did look past my camera into his beautiful hazel eyes & think, maybe...
Little did I know that he was also looking into my eyes, & somewhere, deep in my brown eyes he must have seen something. Something that said to him, "One day we will be together & then, ever after, I will have someone to run all my stupid errands!"
This wifely duty of mine did not bother me until recently, due mainly to the fact that we only have one car. My husband is the breadwinner. Therefore, I am the chauffeur, since, besides my husband, I have the two teenage boys to haul around, I get the car. All things that involve transportation are now my department. Believe me, I do not consider it an honor.
One car does make sense for us here on this island. Used cars are extremely expensive for what you get & the prices of new cars sound more like prices of condominiums. Anyhow, I am not working & the boys school is right next to my husbands job, so one car works for us. Or, should I say, one car works for most of us.
The problem with my not having a job is that I believe my husband assumes that I am available to hop in the car & drive off to wherever, to buy whatever, whenever it occurs to him to request it. I am thinking that he thinks of me at these times like a vacuum cleaner - a handy appliance, but most of the time standing idle & unplugged, just waiting for a masterly hand to provide it with some direction.
My husband is a chef at a resort, & at this type of resort there are often strange & unusual requests from guests that my husband is called upon to fulfill. Being the kind of resort that it is, they go above & beyond the call of duty to please those guests. What causes me to consider that the resort is going "above & beyond the call of duty" is when I have to become involved.
"Helen," my husband will ring me on the phone, "Can you go to the store & get me (for example):
- Styrofoam containers
- gluten free pasta
- kosher anything
- Belgian endive
- kiwi's
- Bounty Paper Towels
- Pink grapefruit juice
& worst of all, oxtail!" (I asked him what I should do with the rest of the ox, but he told me the tail would come by itself, phew!)
So, when I am at home on a Monday morning, after a 5k walk/jog on the treadmill & I haven't bothered to shower as I like to mop on Mondays, so there I am, sweaty, disgusting in my gym clothes, surveying my partially mopped floor, you can imagine that when my phone rings & I see that it's my husband, I do cringe a little. Odds are he is not calling to tell me he misses me...
"Helen, you know those platters with lids?"
"Y-e-s-s-s?"
"Do you think they have them at Progressive?"
"No, I don't." Progressive is a grocery store less than a mile away, not too far a trip, if I can't get out of it.
"What about Fontana?"
You know, I will complain about anything that inconveniences me, as that is the selfish kind of person that I am, but in the case of a real emergency, when someone is really in a bind, I would like to think I would rise to the occasion. But this doesn't sound like an emergency. First off, I don't hear that desperate edge to my husbands voice - in fact, he is chewing! So, whatever the reason we are talking about platters with lids, the situation doesn't seem to have affected his appetite. I mean, you have to feel pretty laid back to be chewing on the phone! & Fontana is way the heck in town, which is at least an hour round trip. Worse, all four of us were just in town yesterday - why couldn't we have looked for platters with lids then?
Of course, while watching the floor dry & tucking my sweaty hair behind my ears, I said as much. Several times.
(Meanwhile, remember, my husband is on the other end of the phone picturing me standing idle & unplugged by the wall, purse & keys in hand, just waiting for that masterly direction we talked about. Knowing that this is his perspective, you can't really blame the guy.)
So, sensing my inexplicable uncooperativeness & allowing as how he figured I wouldn't help him anyway, my husband swallowed what he was eating (& it was white chocolate - boy, nothing like adding insult to injury!) & hung up rather coolly, the possibility of platters with lids at Fontana remaining unanswered.
Once I met a man on a ship. He had beautiful hazel eyes. I cannot say that I knew at that moment that we would end up together, but I did look into his eyes & think, maybe...maybe it wouldn't be so horrible to run this guys stupid errands for the rest of my life. And the rest is history.
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