No, I understand completely, and I agree. You can't really get to know me until you see me with my wife.
Our children left home last summer, and we're empty nesters now, and we are getting more, umm ... I think
integrated might be a good word. In the sense that we each have our areas of responsibility, and we coordinate effortlessly, but we're still just a couple of weird loudmouth best friends, too also.
Her office is downstairs and mine is upstairs, so we spend the day hollerin' at each other. Yes, we have computers and could chat, or even have a streaming video app. Yes, I could easily install an intercom system so we wouldn't have to yell at each other all day. What fun would that be? No thank you very much. We do a lot of communication.
And then we walk two miles every day, and have wonderful conversations on the North Raleigh Greenway. This week they're releasing a lot of water into the river from the lake upstream, the water level is really high, and the high school kids are jumping off the train bridge, forty feet above the river. Awesomeness. And the whole world is exploding with color and new life.
But anything needs to be done around this place, we're like a well-oiled machine. Snake removal from the garage? I got it. Find a place to stay in Hilton Head that's walking distance from the beach? She's got that one, and she found an excellent and affordable place that we will see in August.
We're a team built on love and competence, and I hope that doesn't change any time soon. But my friends here understand how fragile we all are, and how quickly our lifestyle could be destroyed. There are several people here who were part of a team just like ours, but suddenly the team was gone, and I can't even imagine how hard it must be to adjust and keep going, one foot in front of the other.
If anything happened to my wife, I would have to use the example of my dad to get through it. My dad lost his wife and his only brother, who was his best friend, in the same month, July 2005. He's been alone for 18 years now, except for children, grandchildren, and now a couple of great-grandchildren. But basically, everyone he ever knew who was about his age is now dead and gone.
And it's interesting, because for more than fifty years, you could say the same about my dad as I said about myself above, that you wouldn't really know him until you saw him with my mom. My mom was a mean ass, violent alcoholic and I didn't like her none at all, but by gum he never stopped loving her and they actually were a functional team when they were together .. well, at least until the Sun set and she started drinking.
She could drink me under the table any time. My god, that woman could drink. And I inherited the alcoholic gene, and it has had an enormous impact on my life in a negative way, but I am fighting it every day. She drank herself to death when she was just 3 years older than I am today, and I hope to live a little longer than 3 more years.
But anyway, yeah. For more than fifty years, my parents were an integrated team, so you couldn't really know one of them separately, and then for 18 years one of them hasn't been around, and I got to know my dad just for himself.
I like him better without my mom around, but don't tell him.
Edit: When I was about 8 years old, one morning my mom hadn't got up yet and my dad was at sea for several months so she was my only parent, so I went to see why she wasn't awake, and she had a big bandage completely around her head.
After my siblings and I had gone to bed, she had drunkenly stumbled into a lamp and fell along with the lamp, and she got a scalp wound, and she had already driven herself to the hospital in the middle of the night, leaving her children asleep, and got it stitched up. Then she drove home to sleep it off. I had to get us all ready for school without her help that day.
My mom.
Well, she had her good points, too also.
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