Nine Years

Nine years of marriage...nine years I've cooked his meals and picked up his wadded up socks and washed his clothes and made his appointments and birthed his big-headed babies and nursed and changed and taught them. Nine years of keeping this house going internally - juggling the million things that moms are just expected to juggle, with few offers of assistance and only occasional words of appreciation. And I haven't minded, not so much. This is, after all, the life that I asked for.

But then he went and forgot our anniversary.

And he wonders why I'm upset. He's had so much on his mind lately, after all. He didn't even realize it was April, he said, just moments after telling me that he writes the date on his time sheet each and every morning at work - which was the only thing that clued him in that today was our anniversary at all. There was certainly no thought of it beforehand. Just another day. Nothing special.

And boy, was it nothing special. He did his thing - go to work, dash home, change clothes (into the clean ones that magically appear in his drawers) and grab his food (that magically appears on a plate on the counter at precisely the time he needs to leave) and out the door for school, which lasts until 10:00, and then drop by the grocery store on his way home to pick up a card for the wife...and sorry that the pop-up thing inside is broken, by the way, but he really liked what it said. (And you can imagine just how sentimental it was, being that the inside had a pop-up thing.)

And I did my thing, which consisted of being slave and whipping girl to two little tyrants all day - one of which is potty training, and we all know what fun that is. Well, except for Gene, who has never had to deal with it a day in his life, ever, because apparently, children just magically potty-train themselves these days.

But I shouldn't be upset. Nah, not at all. Not upset, not disappointed. Certainly not a little bitter.

Nine years. Hmph.