South City Confessions: Find yourself a wife who just gets you
Rachel took care of me last night. She's taken care of me for 23 years.
Around 1 p.m. yesterday, I hit a brick wall. Figuratively, mind you, but it was fierce and seemed to place me in a fog of inaction for the next few hours. Have you ever felt a wave of energy all morning and past lunch, but then the brakes are hit, and you’re not sure what hit you? I lived there last night. It was as if Mike Tyson were waiting for me outside the warehouse lunchroom door to throw a stiff jab at my jawline.
My eyes went from weary to hazy, my energy dropped from three cups of Dan to decaf-laden misdirection, and the rest of the workday was an uphill battle. According to my smartwatch, I only closed two rings yesterday due to this inactive evening. Imagine a tiny piece of technology telling you that you’re a lazy piece of shit.
Once this happens, bad shit starts to roll near you. Every weekday after work, I go to pick up my son from his friend’s house. He goes there after school to hang out, and I swing by around four to pick him up. Right when I pulled up, the urge to take a gigantic piss swept over me. Tired, needing to pee, and about to blow a gasket, I knocked on the door to no avail. The kids inside the house had a combined age of 26 maybe, but their hearing is already crap. Go figure.
So, I race down to a Phillips 66 to relieve the pressure and come back. Since I don’t want to be a prick, I buy something before leaving. The kid is apologetic. Vinny knows when I am mad, because he boards the car like a train with steam coming out of it. His phone was dead for a bit; do kids’ phones typically only hold a 25% charge or something? All I wanted to do was go home, but the kid needed to eat something. Since I’m a weak-in-the-knees parent, I was going to get him fast food.
That’s where the wife swings into action like a Sicilian midget superhero. She’s already in the Chick-fil-A drive-through, getting his food, and the pets have already been fed. All I had to do was go home, hug my pit bull, tell my kid sorry for being a semi-raging monster (I was calm and simmering when he got in the car), and relax. When she gets home, there are groceries to unload, and that’s like an extra workout for me, so I jump into action.
She tells me dinner is being cooked, and that I need to relax and write (I finished the Nootbaar piece while sipping bourbon like medicine). She made meatball subs and a Caesar salad, two comfort foods for this big caffeinated protein factory. Without question or request, she whips up a meal that could have fed an offensive lineman and his hungry friend. We go over bills, turn on the Blues game, and I pass out like a dockworker during the depression.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to find a partner who understands you. They understand the needs, recognize them miles or minutes ahead of time, and take care of you. It’s more than sexy time or hot bodies; it’s companionship at the highest level. Back in 2002, on the dry, grassy fields of Hatch Hall, I found this fiery little Italian and claimed her as mine. No one else at Mizzou had a shot. No one else would ever get to have this Queen. I took out my sword, swung it around, and dared anyone to come near us.
The only way you overcome what’s happening in a chaotic world is by finding the right person to ride through a storm with, and I did. I didn’t get a college degree, and I got turned down by multiple writing gigs. But I found Rachel, and that’s the gift that keeps on giving.
A few years ago, at an airport in Florida, following an up-close-and-personal search by security, I was fuming like a driver on McCausland during rush hour and wanted to punch anything and everything in sight. My wife swept into the situation like a doctor, prescribing three fingers of Maker’s Mark for her husband. Like they say, the liquid worked like magic. I was calm, cool, and collected as I boarded the plane into a blissful mix of cinema and partial sleep.
Where would we be without great women by our side? Any man who attempts to mansplain his way through an answer that gets close to “we would be fine” should be left to fend for himself at a grocery store without a list or cellphone. Any dude in a marriage or relationship knows how vital their woman is in their everyday life. Sure, my wife needs me as much as I need her, but I wouldn’t want to weigh the exact amounts going in each direction if you know what I mean.
As if more proof were necessary, Rachel received a big promotion at Crescent today. She is the Director of Performance and Strategy, a high-ranking executive position held by someone who has been with the company for less than two years. From the moment she passed through the old doors over at the old location, her trajectory was expected by no one more so than me. It was inevitable. Some birds don’t need a roof to tell them that they can’t fly higher.
At work or home, she is a caretaker of the highest order. Rachel is the kind of person who plays dumb in front of plumbers and contractors so she can wow them with her talents a few seconds later. She’s the kind of person who does math in her head faster than most, and fixes things that still gives nearby men a look on their faces that should be hung in an art museum. Men and women fawn over her every day, but she’s mine.
All of this to say that the goal is to find someone who understands and gets you on a complete level, but there’s a good chance they won’t be as good as Rachel. That’s fine. Sometimes, others get to chase waterfalls.