The Wife Knows

The wife knows things that others don't know. Marriage is often one of those things that looks "green" from far away, but when you're the one standing on the field, you get the dirt between that green grass in your toes.

For example, on my anniversary this week, my husband swirled into my office with a red rose in a vase and a very nice card, kissed me quickly, accepted my impromptu proposal (it was all I could think of to say), and left again.

Four women in the cubicals surrounding mine rushed over and asked me to have my husband talk to their husbands, to teach them a thing or two.

I love my husband. He's great.

But here's the truth. What other women see is the rose and the card and the kiss and the whirlwind surprise.

What amuses me is that at the time they were seeing all that great stuff, I was looking at the clock, which was telling me that my husband only had seven minutes in which to get our baby delivered to day care and make it to work. He was going to be late again.

I remember when I was divorced, there was a time when I made two wonderful new friends, who seemed to be wonderfully happy in wonderful marriages. One of them had two little girls (I had none) with perfect bows on the sides of their heads. I'm pretty sure her house had a white picket fence and everything.

I had been looking for a happy marriage, little girls with bows on their heads, and that whole picket fence thing for several years.

A year later, I was getting married, and both of them were getting divorced. (One of them told me that her husband had declared when she'd started to stand up for herself, "We can't BOTH be selfish!") You just never know what goes on inside a marriage unless you're in it.

So, I'll happily take my rose-and-card-and-kiss whirlwind and just smile to myself when other women gush that they think my husband is perfect.

They don't know he's late, but they also didn't get the hug when I came in the front door sobbing last month. They don't get to share knowing smiles and laugh with him over the cute things our kids say. They didn't hear the things he whispered to me last weekend. He accepts me as I am and honors the best parts of me. I don't think it gets better than that.

Ani l'dodi v'dodi li.