The Unmuddled Mathematician

My Life as a Wife

By Chris Coray, The Unmuddled Mathematician

It’s been an interesting month.  Four weeks ago today my wife got a total hip replacement.  Medicine has come a long way in making this kind of stuff better, but all the attention has been on the patient, not the significant other.

 

At first I was concerned, worried, solicitous, aware and responsive to her every need.  The trouble is I am a man.  The sex that says, “Walk it off.”  For a month besides being the nurse I have done all the laundry, the dishes, the housework, the cleaning, cooking (other than the meals brought to us) in fact pretty much of what she has done for me every day for 48 years.   I want a raise.  Oops, that would fairly mean some back pay owed to her by me.  More money than I have. 

A big problem is standards.  Hers v.s. mine.  Well, she has some.   I figured it may be time to straighten and vacuum the front room when I could no longer see the carpet because of the clothes (clean or dirty), paper, cooties, tools, shoes, and empty pizza boxes.  Fortunately things never got to that state because she did not need an eye replacement and her voice remained clear.  For a while Sherlock Holmes would have observed a dual track in our house, first the prints of a male (with or without shoes), followed by the strange track made by a walker, a device she used to help her be ambulatory.  At this stage I am only glad that these trackers did not come in a military model with Hellfire missiles.  If they did, this article wouldn’t exist and neither would I. 

At first I would hear the phrase, “You might want to sweep there.”   Me, want?  A shorter, more effective sentence would have been “Sweep here” where her still functional arm and hand could and would point.  Although I am a decent operator with a vacuum, the wife of the Muddled Male would never give me a passing grade (probably not to him, either).  But I have persevered and we are getting along.  She has moved on from the walker to a cane to occasionally no extra support.  This is both good and bad.  It means she is getting better but that cane may secretly hold a James Bond-like blade and with one whack I’m toast.  No, “Help, I’ve fallen and can’t get up!”, rather, “Help, I’m now 4 feet tall and bleeding to death!” 

My biggest issue is the chocolate.  She told her friends, don’t bring food, bring chocolate.  Her latest stash is the Hershey candy kisses.  These darn things have a small aluminum foil cover, for some reason a two inch long paper part that I guess is supposed to help unwrap, and the chocolate itself.  But when you have a cane in one hand the foil in the other, what do you do with the paper, as you have no third hand?  The answer is spelled, floor, and I must constantly be on the lookout for these scoundrels as if she sees one she will blame me, the innocent and guileless, for its presence.  Somehow I must have Hershey kiss wrapping sonar running at all times.

And now for the topper.  I am not making this up.   Last night she wouldn’t let me go to bed at the same time as she.  Her line was, “Wait a while, I need to get my arm in the right place and comfortable”.   Nothing about her hip.  The content of her instruction so confused me that for 15 minutes I became the Muddled Mathematician, unable to respond.   My axiom system was spun off into hyperspace.  I could be heard whispering, “Spock, Spock, I need help.” 

Whatever else this experience has taught me it confirms what I have blithely tossed off as a truth, namely, that on our best days men are worth about 10% of women.  That was a sterile comment, as living the reality instead of just the abstraction has brought it home (which I will clean up again in a minute).

My Life As A Husband

The Unmuddled Male's Wife

The best part is having my meals brought to me in the recliner and having the plates taken away, washed and put in the dishwasher.  I always thank him for a good meal just as a good husband should.