Nothing encourages idle hands to write than resting comfortably in a gliding rocking chair with a MacBook Pro in one hand and a glass of pleasingly diluted spirits in the other. Then again, how idle can hands be when encumbered so? So it goes.
As I’ve mentioned previously, in an article about fictional feline back-stories, I’ve been thinking a bit about life, relationships, and fatherhood lately, as I steadily approach the latter. My life is about to change, with the entry of another, and I find I’m becoming very introspective, wondering what kind of world my wife and I are bringing this baby into. One of the things I’ve been focusing on lately is communication. Specifically, the communication between myself and my wife.
If you were to follow my wife and I through one of our weekly trips to the grocery store, I am convinced you would assume the worst about the future of our marriage. Even in the time it would take us to peruse the foreign food aisle in search of tortillas and salsas, you might come to believe we were headed for certain doom. A typical conversation you might here would sound something like this:
Wife: Do you think we should pick up some re-fried beans while we’re here?
Me: I think your face looks like re-fried beans.
Wife: Well, if you wouldn’t hit me in the face all the time, it wouldn’t look like re-fried beans.
Me: If you would just shut your mouth once in a while, I wouldn’t have to beat you up.
Wife: I only talk all the time to distract myself from how much I hate you.
Me: Ok, then.
Wife: Love you.
Me: Love you, too.
Sarcasm. Utter and complete sarcasm, for those of you that may not have caught it (put the phone down, mom). These conversations are spoken in dead monotone, as if we were both completely incapable of emotion due to years and years of abuse.
I’ve talked to my wife about this phenomenon at length. We’ve analyzed it together, looked at possible problems or emotional tolls, and we have decided that, at least for ourselves, this banter is harmless. In fact, we’ve come to find that this sort of faux-fighting has begun to positively affect our relationship. It helps to have such a form of amusement to bring us out of whatever real argument we might find ourselves in, late in the day, when we’re both grumpy and bored. When such a spat begins, nothing deflates the tension like a good bit of obvious sarcasm like “Well, you’re probably just the stupidest person in America, that’s all. No big deal”.
Fighting clean is an art we pride ourselves in. From the beginning of our marriage, we have striven to cultivate a household where no argument or disagreement could ever be so important that we would feel the need to hurt one another. When I forget to leave the not-so-proverbial seat down, and my loving wife gets irritated with her loving husband, what may start out as a frustrated discussion of my shortcomings will usually end with one of us telling the other they smell like moldy cheese. Tension eased, conflict avoided. I’ll remember to put the seat down next time. So it goes.
So I think about all these things. I think about the fake-fighting, the fake stories about our pets’ previous lives, and all the other bizarre idiosyncrasies that make up our daily lives, and can’t help the small smile that grows on my face. My daughter-to-be is just weeks away. Maybe even days. She already has two parents that are deeply committed to each other and her. They fight every day, but clean, and never in anger. They make up fictional stories about animals, but quite creative ones.
My glass is empty. So that’s the end of this. I’m going to go hug my wife and watch The Soup.
Brad Dillon is a husband, father-to-be, and web developer in Atlanta, Georgia. He writes and shares for the pure enjoyment of it, and uses his blog as a web development playground.
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