Skip to main content

A note for my wife

All along, I've said I have the plum job in our family.
I am a stay-at-home dad, which I know and many of you know is a tough job in its own right, but as long as I am a stay-at-home dad, I'll never say it's a tougher job than that of my wife, no matter what job she has.
And I know from experience she has a very tough job now; she's a low-level manager. That, my friends, is a tough, tough job to have. I won't go on and on about why being a low-level manager is hard, so here's a summary: You get crap from everyone below you in the chain of command, and you get crap from everyone above you on that same chain (and somehow all the crap that's not in the chain of command somehow finds its way to your desk). And if you find yourself in the predicament my wife is in, working 12-13 hours a day with more than two hours commute each day, that pile of crap is an awfully hard pile of crap to shovel through, especially with no compensation for the extra hours or the commute.
I'm not going to say my wife has the hardest job in the world or that her job is tougher than your job. All I can say for sure is that her job is harder than mine.
Even if I'm at the verge of tearing hair from head because my toddler daughter is having one of her daily really bad moments (she's getting to be quite the feisty toddler daughter), I can find a way, usually, to calm her down and even get her back into a playful mood. Then I get my reward: a smile or a laugh or even a hug and kiss from my toddler daughter. Even if nobody shows me any appreciation for the job I have, I'll have that, even if I go bald from hair-pulling.
Not so for my wife.
If her job brings her to tears because a boss crawls down her throat or one of her workers throws a toddler-inspired hissy fit, my wife can work her tail off to appease them, often to no avail. I can assure you no playful mood, no smile, no laugh or no hug and kiss will come from it.
And after such a day, all she has to come home to is a cranky husband and a sleeping child (she should come home to a happy husband and a playful child, don't you think?).
And so I've come to realize (or I've known all along) that I do have the easier job, and even though I have the plum job, I haven't been doing a vital part of it very well.
I have not offered my wife a warm enough shoulder or a patient enough ear. I haven't held her enough, or kissed her enough. And then there's this one thing that every husband must learn but it's the toughest thing for him to learn: shut up and listen, just shut up and listen.
And so to my wife I say, "Cherish, I will work harder to give you a warm shoulder and a patient ear. I will shut up and listen."
I'm old enough to know I can't make a promise such as this and make it happen overnight, but I'll try to do the best I can for my wife.
I will try.
My best.
For my hard-working wife.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Willow's morning of play, play, play exhausts poor, old Dad

Willow's playtime universe continues to grow. Rapidly. Witness. In the midsummer heat, I take Willow out to our shaded backyard in the morning to play. And play she does. She climbed into her swing first. After I pushed her for a while, I got her out of the swing and put her in her wagon so she could help me convey bags of sand from the garage to the backyard to fill her sandbox (part of her new swing set) and her water table sandbox. She took rake and shovel and played in the sandbox for a bit. Then she waddled over to the deck and started to climb the steps to get to the water table. She played in the sand a bit, but most of her time was used dipping water up and out of the water part of the water table. Most the water ended up all over her. After that she wanted off the deck to go back to swinging. Instead I retrieved the new tricycle Cherish procured from a Franklin recycle center and cleaned it up. Willow loved the trike, holding on to the handle bars while I pushed her...
Post a Comment
Read more

Willow hones her friend-making skills

Up until now Willow has enjoyed the company of other tots her age only in the sense that where they are is where the fun and the toys are. That is to say she likes the toys and the gyms and the swings and if she has to be around these other toddlers, so be it. That's with kids her own age. She LOVES older kids, but they don't care much for her (other than "she's a baby," and Willow can't keep up with them, though she tries). Her older cousin, Rett, for example, hung the stars and moon in her opinion, so she'll just about do anything he does, including cozying up with him on the chair to watch a movie. And he does like her more than the typical older kid does. But as far as all the toddlers and babies roughly in Willow's age range, she doesn't have much use for them. She's not mean to them. She'll let them take a ball from her hand, for example (as some say, she plays well with others). But I can tell you, most definitely, she just doesn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Willow's tooth-brushing goes from rocky to rocking

Willow has been giving us fits for months now about brushing her teeth before bed. She's usually better brushing her teeth in the morning, meaning it's less like wrestling an alligator for me, but at night before bed, she turns into the Tasmanian Devil. We've tried making the tooth-brushing as fun as possible for her, but I usually end up holding her against her will while I try, mostly in vain, to pry the toothbrush into her clamped-shut mouth. Sometimes we give up. We've tried singing to her. Dancing. Story-telling. Tickling. Nothing has really worked. But Mommy might have hit on the solution. A singing toothbrush. Yesterday Mommy brought home a toothbrush that belts out Queen singing "We Will Rock You." This toothbrush ROCKS! And Willow loves it. We tried it out last night, and on the inaugural brushing, Willow brushed her teeth successfully all by herself. She danced the whole time too. And I stayed bruise free (I also, surprisingly, had more energ...
Post a Comment
Read more