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It is said that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I
am finding it also makes the laundry basket overflow and dishes pile
up in the sink. I’m not certain but I’m pretty sure it raises your
cholesterol too.
The absence I’m speaking of is my wife’s, who is in
Ireland with her mother fulfilling my mother-in-law’s dream to see
the Emerald Isle. As I write this she has been gone eight days with
three to go.
Having married at 19 I never fully mastered the bachelor
arts. I have never dried my socks in a microwave oven. I have
never let the dog lick the plates clean before (or instead of)
putting them in the dishwasher. I have never styled my hair with a
table fork or considered a fresh coat of deodorant the moral
equivalent of a bath. I have never drunk milk directly from the
carton, much less licked a spoon clean and put it back in the
drawer. It’s not that I’m not a natural slob, which I am; it’s that
it has been trained out of me.
One of the things I brought to married life, for
instance, was the habit of wadding up towels and wedging them behind
the towel bar after a shower. Esthetics aside, my wife objected
that this led to mold, locker room odors, the decline of western
civilization, tooth decay, and evils too numerous to mention. I, on
the other hand, thought she should be happy I showered regularly.
She finally stopped complaining. Not only that, she
announced she was going to stop, an act for which I was too newly
married to grasp the implications. I was just pleased I wouldn’t
have to hear about it – until I went to bed and found my pillowcase
stuffed with wet, mildewed towels.
I can count the times my wife and I have been apart this
long on the fingers of one hand and this is the first since the kids
have been grown. Before, I at least had to be a good example for
them, which kept the place from being mistaken for a landfill. Now
the only brakes are my personal tolerance for chaos and the ridicule
I suffer when my daughter drops by.
I have discovered my inner slob is alive and well but
tamed by years of housebreaking. I do take out the garbage before
the ants carry it off, or at least beat them to the door. I can
empty the kitty litter box without the assistance of a hazmat team.
I do laundry before I’m reduced to sifting through piles in search
of the cleanest dirty shirt.
Having expressed doubts, my wife will be delighted to
learn all this but I have written this column long enough to know
there are women right now screaming “Your wife is not a maid, you
swine!” I’m sure there are men saying it too, if their wives are in
earshot, and it’s true. She’s not a maid.
It is also true that I am not a mechanic or fix-it man
and that repair jobs don’t get done when I am away. We each have
our skills and have fallen into the roles that fit them.
But there is more to it. A few years ago I wrote a
about a study that found paroled convicts who married were less
likely to return to crime than their single brethren. In that
column I said “There is something civilizing about marriage, a
generalized sense of responsibility that comes from deep commitment
to another person. It is why society has a legitimate interest in
preserving the institution.”
And so it is. And so, it seems, I have become
civilized. Too bad my wife isn’t here to see it.
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