Marriage as an Act of Will

I'd like to take credit for the line, "marriage is an act of will", but I actually heard it in a movie we watched the other day. As soon as it was delivered, my husband and I swung around and looked at each other, savouring a parallel moment of epiphany. How very true. It is actually a mutual act of will because unless both parties will it against all odds, it will not survive the crap life throws at every couple. Driving up Carling Avenue a couple of years ago, following yet another domestic disaster, Brian looked at me and said, "If you could only separate the crap from the crap." I nearly fell out of the car in paroxysms of laughter. He seems to deliver all the best lines. Facing some left-curve challenge or other a while back he said, "Life is filled with small victories and mediocre defeats." Damn, I wish I'd said that. My reaction to the latest "crap" is usually some very creative and imaginative expletive like, "Oh @%&*!" Pretty grim for someone who considers herself a creative writer.

This quick-witted husband of mine has delivered other pithy sayings at the perfect moment, such as the time he told an enthusiastic critic to "get in the race, or hand me a water bottle". Another one was aimed at a boss who sneered at him for coming second in the Rhodes Scholarship. Well, at least I was in the race", he countered. Yet another boss, parsimonious with praise, informed Brian that he had better watch his step because..."I'm a trained killer." "Really? Well, I'm a born killer." And being the offspring of generations of army brass, railway police and merchant navy men, he is right. His career was actually temporarily damaged a number of years ago when another superior pestered him to play squash. As a junior Davis Cup tennis player, Brian kept putting the man off, rightly fearing that creaming him could produce consequences that might ooze into the workplace. The match eventually came and went, with predictable results. Why he had to add, "We should play tennis next time, Paul, that's really my game," I have no idea? But I digress.

I am beginning to use another word a lot........"tiresome". Says a lot about my own state of mind, sadly. I am hoping it's the end-of-winter blahs that are fashioning me into a crashing bore myself. I had a lunch date this week with an old colleague (he's not 'old', younger than I, but since I have retired everyone is an 'old' colleague). Anyway, we used to travel together so frequently that we began to behave like an old married couple. Happily, we have kept in touch -- out of pity on his part I am sure. But as I sat there, boring him to death with talk about my boring life, I began to bore myself to death listening to me boring him. I mean, how many ways can you describe swimming, cooking and the latest run-ins with harridans, hags and trolls in the laundry room. I used to advise ministers of the Crown -- I even met The Queen -- and now I am faced with decisions of the magnitude of colours or whites. The "hating makeup" hobby horse was again trotted out and ridden hard. I actually told him he should consider himself lucky I rated him important enough to put it on. Afterall, I bragged, only last Friday I had refused to go to a reception at the Tanzanian High Commission because I could not face the war paint exercise -- particularly because the "same, old crowd" I knew would be there was just not worth ten bucks of Estee Lauder.

But my friend is a very well-brought-up and polite gentleman. He toughed it out for almost an hour, poor guy, before he muttered something about having to leave to do laundry. I exaggerate, but not by much. Imagine getting to the point in your life where you're trumped by an afternoon with 20-Mule-Team Borax. He is a life-long bachelor, which may explain why he puts up with me. He has no idea how a middle-aged woman should act. Last summer I was invited to an office event..."so we can get poor Nancy out of her pyjamas"...is how one 'old' colleague put it. Man, that motivated me and I plastered on the paint and swept into the bar in style!

The one delicious saving grace that evening was that my old boss was there -- she of the perfect hair (dyed a 100 times too often), the starved skeletal form (screaming for a cheese burger) and the nails bitten to the quick (confirming the stress she bore struggling to look 30 years younger). Boy, those nails really used to throw me in meetings. I remember being unable to concentrate on a word out of her pursed lips because all I could do was stare at those painful fingernails and feel sorry for the little critters, struggling their hardest to grow, only to be knawed off every time they gained a millimetre by her vicious teeth. Much as I fought it, they often triggered a stiffled gag reflex, which I tried to hide behind a fake cough. Her nibs could have been blathering on about the government being about to fall, or the minister's latest fiasco, for all I knew. My focus was trained on her sad, raw, stubby fingernails.

But back to marriage and will. When I look at my long-suffering spouse and my long-suffering self the phrase "mexican standoff" also comes to mind. This morning he did battle in the trenches of the local grocery store -- a facinating chore I usually handle. Apparently, it gave him a new appreciation of my life fighting in the aisles among the great unwashed. Since I have retired, the domestic gender chore split is zero to everything. Guess who does the "everything"? My own fault again because I don't like the way he does domestic. Too much work for me re-doing it all. The standoff continues.