My Sixth

I have thought before that we currenly have three children and that the house at times seems to take on a role similar to that of two more children for the amount of attention it seeks. When we moved out of our apartment and into a 4 bedroom home, I mentioned it was like one baby was growing up and going off to college and we were bringing home newborn twins with our new responsibility of taking care of the larger space. However, this entry is about another person in my life for whom I have role as a nurturer. My husband.

My perspective of my husband and his role in my life has changed during the five years that we've been parents. He started out in my mind as the rescuer. Someone for whom I couldn't wait for his help, assistance, and ideas as the time grew nearer for his return home from work each day. He lovingly and kindly accepted this role and immediately started helping with dinner, bathtime, bedtime, and laundry the moment he walked in the door nightly as we cared for our newborn son.

The years went on and I began to think of him as a happy help meet, for whom I was grateful to see in the evening but immensely satisfied to share the baton with and increasingly at times could welcome him with a clean home, hopefully cheery and clean children, and a warm dinner ready to greet him. I started to realize that it was not better in the long run or even immediately if he was aware of the work that had been necessary to complete the day, the chores accomplished, the spills that had taken place, or the efforts that had gone into accomplishing that moment when he walked in the door.

Without any petition from him, but I am sure as a direct result of his example I slowly felt myself evolving into wanting to quietly offer to him the gift of a peaceful evening. He used to say to me when we were first married, regarding the household chores, "I think to myself, if I don't do this (wash the dishes in the sink, for example) then Melissa is going to have to do it. And that encourages me to do it, so she won't have to." He often quotes President Hinckley's words, "I have long felt that the greatest factor in a happy marriage is an anxious concern for the comfort and well-being of one’s companion."

My thoughts did not follow the same pattern that his did about "If I don't do this, he'll have to," but rather sounded something like, "Oh, maybe Robbie will help me with [folding that last load of clothes or taking the garbage out] when he gets home."

It was difficult for me to try thinking as he did because well, it was very selfless (I'm not putting myself down) but it was not as attention-filled as a recognition of how "hard I must have worked all day" - rescue.

As his work schedule changed to include longer hours and our number of children has grown, I started passing that full garbage bag and realizing that he wasn't going to be home for 11 1/2 hours. I grabbed the sack and took it out to the dumpster. Then it became a game for me rather than to show him all that I'd accomplished during the day, to try to bite my tongue and not say one word about our work but to try to dash around and see if I could beat him home with getting dinner on the table and having things straightened up by the time he walked in. Something changed in his eyes during those months. He was always the kind and loving rescuer. But now he was relieved in a way that I hadn't seen before. He was happy and light-hearted instead of willingly motivated to roll up his sleeves to help us. He could wrestle with the kids and read them long stories at bedtime without any worry that he was leaving me with laundry to fold or dishes to wash the next morning.

And then one morning we drove to Sacramento to have lunch with him. As we sat in the lobby of a building downtown next to an indoor waterfall on leather furniture, surrounded by brisk walking manicured professionals in business suits I glanced over at our Dad. There he was playing with our kids, wearing a completely wrinkled shirt. As his pant legs rose while sitting across from me I noticed he had on badly worn out black socks. This same man who left me a hand-written note in my lunch for work nearly every day that I worked in an office during our marriage and who told me nearly every day, "Thank you for working for us," at some point during my day was making his own lunch for the office and working without complaint or thought for himself.

In his sixty hour work week, with a handful of hours of rest at the end of each day, he has never taken the time to iron his clothes and has mentioned to me a couple of times in passing during our seven years of marriage that ironing is not one of his favorite things. He wears wrinkle-free shirts, determined that they will do. His wrinkle-free shirt was not holding up its end of the bargain that day. I realized a couple of things that day. That never in my wildest dreams had I thought of opening our closet and ironing any of our clothes. The activity seemed too dangerous with small kids potentially pulling at the iron's cord or the thin legs of the ironing board, and time consuming with many other chores at hand. I also noticed that my husband needed some nurturing in his days as well.

I picked up the dusty iron and found the ironing board. I selected one white shirt and two work shirts and ironed them when London was asleep and Blake and Grace were playing in another room. It was fast, easy, and kind of fun even as I listened to a talk radio show in our room. I put the pressed clothes in the closet and left the iron on the counter to cool. I decided that I would not put the iron away each night but would leave it out so I would not forget about my new thought to nurture my husband, as well.

For all that he gives to our family and the selfless man that he is, I say to you: Happy Fathers Day, Handsome.