Jeff Ward: Ode to a Geneva Wife

I know, I know! I’m the one who wrote the reason married men outlive their single counterparts is because our wives generally delight in watching us die a slow, painful and lingering death.

I may have also said something along the lines of the smile frequently seen on a deceased bachelor’s face isn’t the result of rigor mortis. With all due respect to the multitude of male readers who, when their wives’ weren’t looking, raised a clenched fist in solidarity, I have to reconsider my previous position.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m beginning to believe, a la Star Wars, there really is a force that may actually increase a husband’s life expectancy.

Before you chastise me for turning to the “feminization of America” dark side, please allow me to explain. From last Friday till this Tuesday, my lovely wife took off to attend her younger sister’s nuptials in California’s famous Napa Valley. I generally don’t go to weddings because I tend to weep uncontrollably—at the thought of yet another male entering a lifetime of indentured servitude.

Though I frequently encourage my spouse to visit her far-flung family, she rarely takes me up on it. This always amazes me because, by now, I’m sure you have some sort of an idea of what it must be like living with me. But since she couldn’t pass up a wedding, I sent her westward with my blessing.

And what a mistake that was! The second she left, it was as if there was some mystical, magical and extra-dimensional disturbance in that previously mentioned force.

First, my middle school son forgot the lunch I spent hours trying to make. Of course, this was the same impertinent little so-and-so who told me I shouldn’t swear just because I can’t find the $*#!@% ham.

So, just like , it was off to the middle school before he resorted to his favorite tactic of scavenging every possible variety of junk food from all his friends. Minor bump in the road, I thought. A few deep breaths, I’ll be fine, I thought. Until, for the first time in eight years, he missed the bus.

I seriously considered making him walk the 1.5 miles home, but then I remembered he had the expensive violin his generous grandmother purchased for him. But when I got to the middle school, he was nowhere to be found. And when I tried to ascertain exactly where he was via the cell phone he rarely picks up, it immediately died.

Just as I was about to brave those 10 levels of security, he came sauntering out the front door. In addition to missing the bus, he'd also forgotten most of his homework. I found myself repeating the phrase my good friend Anne Blaeske often recites, “I love my children, and I hate jail.”

Later that evening, it was off to Robotics Club for our freshman. He was supposed to call me by 8:30 p.m. to retrieve him, but when I gathered the courage to stop cowering in the corner long enough to look at a clock, it was already 9 p.m. Of course, when I called his cell phone, I heard it ringing in his backpack in our front hall. So my younger son had to admonish me for liberal application of four-letter words once again.

When I realized I didn’t have the appropriate friend’s mother’s cell phone number—because my wife takes care of things like that—it was time to track him down. This time my motoring mantra was, “My wife will be upset if sell her oldest son into white slavery.”

And all this before she’d been gone for 24 hours! After I finally got the miscreants to go to bed, I made short work of a fifth of vodka and dreamed of my wife’s rapid return.

On to Saturday, which is typically room-cleaning day. But after an hour of that futility, I wanted to call the Geneva police and have them arrest me for what was about to happen anyway. To cap off that evening, I caught my usually well-behaved dog trying to get at the steak and burgers thawing on the stove.

Sunday was a bit more sedate until we went out to for dinner where the boys insisted on arguing about who should get stuck sitting with me and which one was taking up too much under-the-table foot space.

Finally, on Monday, after relentlessly badgering both boys about their homework, I caught my middle schooler doing his at 7 a.m. His insolent response to my, “What would your mother say about this,” query was, “Let’s make it our little secret.”

In my defense, I did manage to come up with a great way of saving time and money on the laundry. Just do everything in one load! It’s amazing how much those machines can hold and I can’t wait to surprise her with her new pink bras. I’m not sure exactly how to explain it, but the lack of her moderating presence destroyed the zen balance that is the Ward household. Now I understand why double teaming works so well in football.

But even more than having been subjected to that kind of chaos, I kinda missed having her around. (Please don’t tell her.)  There was no one to bounce column ideas off of, I didn’t sleep as well without her, and she wasn’t there to share the epic news of my U13B travel team’s first soccer victory.

So maybe there is something to husbands living longer after all, because if it had been as much as one more day, it would’ve been either them or me.