Bloodless Coup

Small Blessings...

Twisty has a post up about two women who talk about weight gain and desire in terms of what they do for their husbands, or feel guilty about not being able to do for their husbands (including losing baby weight). Twisty, of course, laments the "prison" of female beauty.

The one sentence made me want to cry, and to shake some guy I've never met until his teeth rattled (not really, ok?):

“Hub,” writes L., “didn`t want me to go to his office Christmas party, nor has he invited anyone from work to our house. When I joked that this was because I was ‘no longer a wife worth showing off,’ he got very quiet. Saying nothing at all was infinitely worse than anything he could have possibly said.”

That's right. A guy who is ashamed of the way his wife looks, based on the consequences of bearing their children.

I'm trying very hard not to speculate if these partners who want the perfect wife have lost any hair. Or better, if any of that hair has migrated from their head to their back, which is often the natural progression of aging. Beer belly? Sagging butt? No, I am not going to speculate about that at all. Especially not with a snarky turn of phrase that says something about how he didn't even have to bear a child and have bleeding gums and hemorroids and high blood pressure and loosened joints that made none of his shoes fit anymore or wild hormonal shifts that made his body seem like not his own to get that physical change. Nope.

And the reason is that I would rather focus on the positive, and count my not-so-small blessings.

You see, I used to be married to someone like that. Who would, unsolicited, point out to me that on my 5'11" frame, that a shift from 130 to 135 pounds made my ass look fat. Or who when standing in line at the grocery store, when I commented favorably on a lovely green velvet low cut spaghetti strap dress on the cover of a women's magazine, he took a look at my (underwire reinforced) D-cups and said "maybe in a gravity free environment."

Oh yes, that was one of my personal favorites. And that was in the good days. The "honeymoon" as it were.

Yeah, I know. Caveat emptor and all that. It was a very skillful bait and switch.

And here's the thing. The women talking about the physical stuff, as if it was a bait and switch that they had perpetrated on their husbands... they haven't done a bait and switch at all.

People age. Babies change women's bodies. Forever. Our lives get mapped in our physical form, and leave traces, and stories, and history.

It's natural. It's normal. It's human.

To deny the physical transformations everyone undergoes is to deny life itself. We get slower, creakier, fatter, softer, droopier, smarter, wiser, more patient, with better stories to tell and much more interesting lines in our faces when we smile and laugh.

And when you are watching the person that you love change over time, and realize that you are changing too, that you are changing together, you remember the wonderful days at the beach that helped contribute to both of your wrinkles. You remember the surgery your beloved had that made that scar, when she puked all over you from the pain meds. You still love to touch your sweetie's hair, even though there's a little less of it and some of it is getting grey at the temples. And when your love smiles at you, all twinkling eyes and crinkles at eye corners, you don't see crow's feet. You see boundless love, and you know the smile is oh so real because of the depth of those lines between twinkly eyes and grey temples.

Heh. Didn't know I was a mush ball, eh?

That's the other part, you know. That the person who loves you because of what many people call physical flaws also loves you for your inconsistencies, your constant traits, your "hard-ass" and your "marshmallow."

And because I'm hopefully talking about your small blessings, but am really talking about my small blessings, that person loves you whether you shave your pits or let the hair grow to your knees, whether or not your hair looks like Einstein's, and regardless of the fearsome snoring or paint peeling farts that come out of you. That person finds those grooming choices to be interesting experiments. That person aids and abets your desire to be judged by your heart, your mind and your deeds, not your looks, but still finds your looks, however you choose to let them be, utterly compelling.

Much more than small blessings.

Posted by binky at March 22, 2006 09:07 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Random Thoughts