For the last fourteen years I have been married to a wonderful woman. She and I have six kids. They are all wonderful in their own way and we have a fair amount of fun when we are not having to be parental.
When we got married I knew for sure two things about my wife, she had a lot of family (all Mormon) and she did not know how to cook. The former was pounded into me a few weeks before we got married and my wife took me to a major family reunion. Five hundred relatives of one Mormon ancestor. It was a lot of cowboy hats, (ugh) and camping (double ugh).
I found myself swimming upstream and drowning through most of it.
The second part came about because my wife explained that she only knew how to cook one thing well. Two if you count pancakes from a prepared mix.
So one day, my wife goes out of her way to make a dinner for me. She is pregnant with our first child. Hormones are raging in their deadly dance and making PMS look like child’s play.
She makes me a spinach omelet.
Now to tell an honest truth, I hate spinach and I find omelets kind of soggy. They just do not seem that great and about the only one I can eat at all is a Western one where the ham and cheese take over for the flavour.
Worse yet, for me, was that she burned it. It was a flavour of runny, grainy, leafy, charcoal taste. I would love to say I was a man and that I ate with aplomb suffering for my wife’s sake.
Ha, no. Instead I tried to reason with her trying to explain that I really never liked either. That went over like a lead Zeppelin.
After getting my ears chewed off and taking my lumps I vowed to do more cooking and less complaining. It worked out a lot better over the years. And truthfully my wife with practice got a lot better. Just as I got better at some things, like listening, that I was not really prepared to do after we got married.
So why am I telling you all this? Well today was our Ward chili cook off, once again not a big favourite of mine but not terrible. My sweetie wanted to make her own version. She got it all ready, working with various ingredients like a maestro and making that pot bubble up nicely. The smell was terrific in the house.
The verdict of our panel of judges? She won second place!
It reminds me in a way how often I see how much she has improved over the years, just as I hope I have, and how in other bigger things she has become such an inseparable part of my life. It was nice to see her smile with pleasure at a success achieved.
This of course is not about chili or cooking or anything mundane. It is more about finding joy in the success of your partner. Whether it is achieving in volunteer activities, helping our kids improve, taking on schooling with six kids and still getting great grades or being my strength when I fall apart. She does all of that and so much more.
Yep, it has been a wonderful, crazy fourteen years.
