It's the Little Things that Make a Marriage

Views: 1,070
Added: Mon. Oct 10, 2011 3:36pm
Posted in: Family

• » print
• » report
• » email

A few nights ago my husband Steve hammered a mouse to death. He’d been watching a movie in the living room when our cat deposited the mortally wounded creature next to his recliner.  

“What was all that pounding,” I asked when he came upstairs to wash his hands. Characteristic of a lot of evenings after nine, I was in bed reading a book. Steve described how it all went down. The mouse lay curled on its side next to his chair, its breathing labored. A bead of blood oozed from its tiny jugular. He knew the little creature was done for so he picked it up, put it in a brown paper bag, retrieved the hammer from his tool closet, and…

“Stop!” I waved my hands wildly in the air.

After Steve had put the mouse out of its misery, he took the paper bag outside and tossed the corpse into the wooded lot that edges our backyard. He calls this the “aerial burial,” a last rite he performs for an assortment of pocket pets, aquarium fish, and rodents that die in our house or on our property.

After Steve dried his hands, he went back downstairs to finish his movie. I tried to return to my book, but felt too distracted. In my mind’s eye, I could see all too clearly the poor little suffering creature. What I couldn’t see, however, was me being the one to actually touch it or pick it up and, well, you know the rest of the story. This got me thinking about the division of labor in our household. According to our daughters, ages twelve and fourteen, “Daddy does everything.” That’s their single-minded opinion, and it is always refreshing when the girls agree on something. But how far was their perspective from the truth?  

I have to admit; Steve takes on more than his share of domestic duties. He vacuums and washes the dishes. He does the mother lode (no pun intended) of grocery shopping and meal preparation. “I like to cook,” he reassures me, when guilt prompts me to offer to do more. He makes the bed every morning and feeds the pets I insisted on adopting. More often than not, Steve is also the one who removes the wadded clumps of yellow or brown hair from the shower drain, this despite the fact that his own hair is salt and pepper in color, and clipped short.  

Several of my girlfriends familiar with our household have remarked more than once, “You’re really lucky to have Steve.” I register this comment in the appreciative way it is intended, though sometimes the remark taps into a broader, more irksome attitude, that any domestic duty a man does beyond grilling steaks should qualify him for the Husband Hall of Fame.

But then there are all the other things Steve does to make our house not just a home, but habitable. These are the duties I put in the category of “man-jobs,” such as hauling our discarded furniture or other heavy junk to the dump; snow-blowing the walkways when the temperature is fifteen below; and doing whatever it is you’re supposed to do to prevent our leach field from flooding. I realize that calling this type of work “man-jobs” exposes me as both a hypocrite and a lousy feminist. But the truth is, I wouldn’t be physically strong enough, or have a clue, or have the stomach to do a lot of these things.

Sometimes it worries me, this reality that I am considerably dependent on my husband, especially as I get older; as we get older. But that night as I lay in bed too distracted to read, thinking about all the things that Steve does for our household, it wasn’t a feeling of worry that washed over me. My husband had just hammered a mouse to death. He did it because he is kind-hearted and because he just does these things, though I doubt this particular task was any more palatable for him than it would have been for me. Steve put a dying mouse out of his misery, I thought, experiencing a rush of emotion, and if a husband will do that for his wife, well that doesn’t just make her feel lucky to have him, that also makes her feel loved.

***