Writing from the Heart: Marry a mensch

This August my husband and I will celebrate our 59th anniversary. When we are asked what our secret is, my immediate and maybe too glib response is: Marry a mensch.

But if they really want a serious answer, I’ll say he gets mad at me when I don’t screw the tops back on jars properly, because I don’t deal with the thread correctly. But he doesn’t say anything to insult me. He knows I won’t change.

I get mad at him when he comes back from tennis in a wet T shirt and refuses to change into a dry one, and then starts sneezing all over the place. I say something, but it’s more about caring about him catching a cold.

He gets mad at me when I don’t put the baggie tie back on the bread, and the top two slices get hard. But he doesn’t say anything. He just rewraps my sloppiness.

I get mad at him when he won’t find an Alexander technique practitioner so he’ll do exercises to stand up straight. But I just say, Yoo-hoo, stand up, my cutie pie, or all your organs will be bent like pretzels.

In a long marriage, there are so many annoying little things that could divide and conquer.

But somehow love and time, and finally, a bit of wisdom, manage to help transcend what could have split us up eons ago. Of course, in the early years, there are much bigger things. But you work on them in your 30s, your 40s, and your 50s. So by the time you’re in your 60s, the therapists are coming to you.

One of our big ones has always been that suddenly, without warning, he comes out with an out-of-left-field non sequitur that I know comes out of a brain that sees the world from a totally different perspective from mine. And that’s OK too. But …

For example, just this morning, my husband said something, and I will quote it word for word. There was no lead-in. Nothing that could have triggered this. We weren’t talking about a related topic. In fact, we were just sitting there not talking at all. He said, “If you go back a billion seconds, you go back 30 years. if you go back a trillion seconds, you go back 30,000 years! Isn’t that amazing?”

First of all, I can’t find something like this amazing. As soon as there are numbers involved, I check out, glaze over, leave the area. He should know by now that bits of information that arrive through numbers, percentages, and graphs don’t enlighten me. But I listen politely and think, Wow, I am married to a man who not only knows this kind of fact, he is thrilled knowing it.

Still trying to figure out where that billion seconds thing came from, I trace our conversations from the beginning of the day, trying to find the connection. And then I remember: I had been scrolling, and had come upon one of a thousand politicians asking for money. I had said, I want to give the guy who’s running against Lindsey Graham a donation, and then I paused and said, But there’s no point. Elon will top it a hundredfold. We just can’t compete.

OK, there it is. My husband, hours after the fact, was trying to show me how much a half a trillion dollars is, using seconds instead of dollars.So it’s not exactly out of nowhere. It’s just belated and not a good example for the way I understand things.

Analogies are like ice cream flavors.There are a ton to choose from, but only one or maybe two work for your particular idiosyncratic needs. (Mint Chip and Häagen-Dazs Coffee for me). So many choices, so little time.

So next time a young person asks what the secret is to a long and happy marriage, I’ll say, When you’re glazing over when your guy is giving you an explanation to something you can’t relate to, instead of thinking you hate that he’s from another planet (some men actually are from Venus), appreciate the fact that there is someone in your life who sees the world with a totally different set of eyes. And is in awe at the oddest things.

But I must go back to my original answer: Marry a mensch. It makes life so much easier that way.