Feeling Grateful for My Husband

He’s good at a lot of things.
He knows the Bible inside and out and is my go-to theologian.
The King James Bible sounds perfectly normal when he reads it aloud.
He has been growing plants organically
since before most people knew what that meant.
His garden is amazing,
and even orchids routinely re-bloom for him.
He is fastidious about details
which is a miracle to my slap-dash self.
When lightening hit our TV, he came up with a receipt
from some twenty years prior and it was replaced for free.
He can upholster a chair so you’d never know it was repaired
except, gosh, it looks so much better.
He knows stuff I don’t,
like how to sew a dress,
when to say “lay” or “lie,”
what a second cousin once removed is,
and the names of all his elementary school teachers.
He makes the best Tarte Tatin you’ve ever had,
and at one point even dreamed in fluent French.
 
He does a ton for me.
I literally haven’t done any laundry in twenty-four years.
He takes care of administering our financial hoop-jumping
like taxes and financial aid forms. (Heaven help us if I had to do that).
He untangles those nape-of-the-neck snarls in my knee length hair
caused by winter hats and coat collars, and gives a mean pedicure,
complete with a dreamy peppermint foot lotion massage.
He washes the dishes, insisting it doesn’t matter how many I use.
He was a full-time dad for ten years, changing our children’s diapers,
and then later, reading them bedtime books and chauffeuring them around.
He’s now helping transfer blogs from this old website to the new one.
Whenever I need an editor, I turn to him for correction and a second opinion.
And thank God he prays for me regularly.
 
He’s generously supportive of me.
He believes in me, what I’m about, and what I can do.
He encourages me to be creative and true to my innermost voice.
He let me have the office with a bunch of windows in the attic,
while taking a cave in the basement for himself.
When I come to him with some crazy idea, like homeschooling,
or producing intricate frames inlaid with polymer clay,
or getting a torch to make handmade beads out of molten glass,
he’s in, and game, and wonderful about it.
When I asked this meat-eating Texan
if we could have a vegetarian household
that was fine too, and he sincerely enjoys it.
He’s even grown to genuinely like much of my artwork
which was a stretch at first; and he understands
that like breathing, it is important for me to do more of it.
When I met him he was living with a gentlemanly dark brown decor;
now he’s surrounded by my vibrant color bombarding him brightly
from every direction except for that oasis of an all-white bed.
 
He is noble.
While we love to tease him about his captive audience
when he volunteers at the women’s prison,
he’s often surrounded by women who appreciate him.
However, I’m easily confident in his loyalty to our marriage vows.
It is a delight to have this as a non-issue that I can take for granted.
Moreover, I can count on him to be honest and painstakingly moral.
His standards are based on nothing short of God’s expectations.
 
We have a lot in common
religiously, politically, and in terms of
similar tastes, kindred motives, and allied aspirations.
What a great basis for a marriage!
Like me, he cares a lot about sharing Christian Science.
Also, authenticity and perpetual progress
are essential foundations we both build on.
We’re both all too fallible,
(I suppose I could write a depressing poem about that)
but for both of us, the joy ponderously outweighs the challenges.
After all, we’ve honored each other with our very own precious life.
 
So why a poem about him today?
I’m not sure whether it was
the way he warmed up and without comment ate for breakfast
the leftovers from my recent total flop of a cooking experiment
or whether it was me swooning at him
clean-shaven in his grey cashmere turtleneck that we got at Goodwill
paired with those new slim corduroys from Costco…
It was nothing unusual, really,
that made me realize that it is actually all quite remarkable.
Where would I be without him?
I am so grateful for my husband!
May God keep him healthy, happy, and safe,
showering him with the very best of blessings,
now and always.
 
 
 
Polly Castor
1/29/14