1. Develop amnesia. Find some way to forget what he did. Or (again) didn’t do. Go without sleep or spin 50 times to reduce cognitive faculty. Stick a finger in the socket.
2. If biting your tongue hurts too much, pop some chocolate. Sure, every time.
3. Lie. Tell yourself he’s listening. The short-lived delusion will reap a harvest of peace for the home and the good of the kids.
4. Use your imagination. He mistook medication for digestive enzymes and is suffering severe side effects. Yeah, that’s it. He forgot because he’s sick.
5. Take a deep breath and count to 10. No, 40. In Portuguese…or Swahili. Lose yourself in a dictionary. Hec, master a foreign language. You’ll get there in no time and can hook any job you want. (Let me help. I can count to 1,000,000 in Korean.)
6. Don’t parrot your requests and be called a nag. Text him the list of Honey Dos (even if you’re sitting facing him) after breakfast when glucose has hit the brain before he plans his day. Lunch is too late, what with food coma and that sweet nap. Cap it at three tasks or he’ll ignore them. Reward him with a drink between tasks. Your head hurts? Consider the mental tap-dancing your cerebral exercise for the day. You’re excused from the Times crossword and Sudoku.
There. You might find yourself mangled, bruised, or diabetic. But gosh darn it, you are loving each other to death. Nothing worth having spares the suffering, and he is so worth it. Because when the amnesia wears off, you’ll remember: he said I do. And in his helplessly human way, he has.
Leave a Reply to Anne MehrlingCancel reply