Testing, Testing 1-2-3

My six-week view - with nail polish graphically added by friend Marty Harris….

I always suspected I wouldn’t be the easiest of wives to live with. Since it’s nearly impossible to avoid acquiring the characteristics of one’s mother, and I come from a long line of women with perfectionist tendencies, it was clear that my control freak behaviors could be challenging.

Regardless, we have somehow completed 39 years of marriage and were preparing to celebrate success with dinner out at one of the few places that took reservations on an outdoor patio. Exciting that is, until I slipped on a well-traversed step on our staircase, and landed in a bundle on the aptly named landing with a weirdly angled ankle and a head whacked on a windowsill.

Turns out my head was harder than my leg bone, and after two days of thinking it was just a sprain, we went to an overwhelmed ER where it was confirmed – I had fractured my fibula and was told to only walk on it when necessary.  “Walking” in this case involved lurching unevenly with a neighbor’s old crutches, leg strapped into a Franken-Boot contraption with its hard plastic shell Velcro-ed into position.

This is an unnecessary test to a marriage that was just about to slide into its 40th year.

There are some tests one can predict.

 There are lists of life stressors and I’m pretty sure we’ve experienced most of them. We’ve moved seven times, lived in four states, raised two children, and balanced the preferences of a strong introvert with the tendencies of a raging extrovert.

And only one of us recognizes that there is a right way to set a dining table. A proper way to load a dishwasher. And only one way toilet paper should roll.

And now, one of us was forced into sedentariness in a four-story house, with bedrooms and office on the second floor and all food and engagement with the world on the first. The first pain-filled week is a fog of ibuprofen and Tylenol and awkward hobbling.

After that, I was a tad more demanding. My morning coffee? I requested my collagen peptides be added to the first cup; just a tablespoon or so of cream, please; and oh, the toast? Not just any old spread.

I am equally demanding with my requested supply of water. It needs ice, and constant refills to sustain my preferred state of hydration. Oh – and my Zoom happy hours didn’t stop, so Jacques had to learn which bottles of wine to open, and how to mix martinis and Rusty Nails.

I quickly learned that regular requests to “Just text me!” with any needs were less helpful when his phone was in the same room as I. After consultation with the kids, I did resist however the temptation to get a little bell to ring for service. Seemed a tad excessive.

The good news is that we seem to have weathered this test – so far. Only once or twice throughout this six-week experience has Jacques gone on a simple errand that somehow required many hours away. And when he returned, he looked so refreshed and relaxed that I avoided asking where he went – and just smiled, while handing him my water glass – again.