“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.'” – Shall We Dance?
The Thrill of It All
It’s 4 a.m. and the kitchen smells like cake baking, with a wafting aroma of almond and butter flavoring. You’re tired and your feet hurt and you still have the small top layer of the wedding cake to bake. You head to the fridge and reach for the butter, and uh, oh,--there is no butter. Who you gonna’ call?—of course you know, you’ll go and wake that sleeping guy upstairs and he will head out to the Kroger a mile or so away and get the butter.
Has that ever happened to you? Well, it has to me, many times and each time I awakened the “sleeping giant,” as Yamamoto said, and each time he dutifully went to procure whatever I lacked for this baking process I insisted on carrying out. Maybe I thought of him as a sleeping giant, scared to arouse him for fear he would explode, but he never did. He went—for he could not have me out at 4 a.m. prey to all manner of evils that prowl through the darkness.
You see, my latest escapade was “catering.” I had decided I liked cooking so much that I took courses on baking birthday cakes. That went so well that I took yet another course on baking wedding cakes. This progressed until I was a full fledged walking encyclopedia on how to put on a wedding. So, as with everything in life, I would figure how to make some money out of this. (We poor girls never ever get over being such, and are always looking for a new cash cow.)
But, this was not my only hare-brained idea—no, a plethora of dingbat ideas have come from this pea brain of mine. And always my husband was right there with me, supporting me in every goofy thing I dreamed up or got involved in. He went through it all like someone undergoes gum surgery—it’s not what you want to do, but the thing must be done.
What else did I get him involved in? Oh, there was the PTA. That all started innocently enough with me receiving a call from a neighbor when we moved into our new neighborhood. Since we were officially homeowners I felt we should become respectable and join the PTA. So, I was hornswoggled into becoming the refreshments chair person. That was simple enough, and hey, cooking was my thing, right? But that escalated until we were Vice Presidents, then Presidents. It meant we attended skating parties as chaperones, organized all fund raising projects (one year we netted $35,000!), and worked with the school officials.
I remember clearly the worst year ever of this—it was the year there was a truck strike right before Christmas—so, no delivery. We had to solve this problem, and organized a caravan of pick up trucks and SUVs to travel to the truck company and get our deliveries. Then we had to get the PTA to help break down the delivery into the packets going to each home. What did that mean?—essentially no Christmas that year. There was little time for shopping and baking cookies and so forth. Another year bites the dust. But still my husband stood by me . . . my best friend, my witness.
Still I did not learn. I volunteered the next year to head up the luminary project in our neighborhood. So, we had a ton of sand dumped near our driveway, bought all the bags and candles for each home’s curb footage. Should I even mention here that our neighborhood has roughly 300 homes and that this was the year it went to 5 degrees outside?!!!
Then there were the zoning battles. Those I am actually proud of as we fought City Hall and won several times, thus keeping the integrity of our residential neighborhood.
-The times I decided we needed an adventure and went in search of just that.
-The year I decided to switch from catering to making gift baskets.
-The . . . ???
Do you get the general idea here? It was a madhouse, spawned by the brain of a veritable madwoman. But through all of this my husband maintained the demeanor of Job, and very seldom got irritated. He put up with my nutty ideas, my schemes to make money, my moves to make us respectable by being involved.
This all swept over me one night in one hilarious memory as I sat watching the Doris Day movie, “The Thrill of It All.” You know the one—where the effervescent, sweet Doris Day gets involved in “selling soap” by taking a job offer to star in television commercials about “Happy Soap.” Her husband, played by James Garner, goes along with this until mayhem invades their house and steals all their free time. Well, I am no Doris Day, except for the crazy things I got us involved in through the years. My husband used to just cringe when I came home, rushed in to him and shouted “I’ve got an idea!,” or the even more odious “I’ve got a plan!” I could see his eyes like a deer in the headlights, his brain searching for a way out. But he never took the “out.” For that is what a best friend and witness does for the one he loves.