I snatch an envelope off the counter and smear poetry ink over the seams and around the grocery list. Pancake batter sizzles and finally bubbles. flip. flip. flip. While they cook, I lean onto counter and write. When he walks in, I quickly hide the envelope in a drawer of measuring spoons and mason jar lids. I grasp at hot glasses, bowls, and plates and unload the dishwasher. Out of the corner of my eye I watch him fill a glass. I turn my back to him, but I still hear the gulps underneath the sound of plates being stacked one atop the other. He’s here only because he is thirsty. Changing oil, mowing the lawn, and trimming horse hooves can do that to a man.
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It must be hot today cause he’s chugging and gulping like he belongs in a barn.
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By the sound of things, it must be the sort of thirst I feel when a blank page and two minutes collide.
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I’ve tried to explain my love of words. He doesn’t understand. He is an engineer. He is a right is right and wrong is wrong, mathematical equation, chemical documentation sort of man. And he needs a tangible explanation. I’ve gone at it before, I’ve tried to explain to him, to open his eyes just a little to how my heart beats. Once I did it with food. He likes food. So, this is how I feel when I peel back things other than ‘tater skins. You know how a paring knife cuts, right? The splotchy skin falls into the compost bucket. I even dig the black rotten spots with the knife tip and fling those into the bucket too. A pen on paper does this for me, too, only the scraps don’t go in the compost heap with the rotting veggie peels. It’s like that for…
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Interrupting he says, What? I don’t get it. Good for you though.
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And more than once he’s told me that this artsy-fartsy stuff just doesn’t make sense.
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I say nothing this morning. I move to the stove and flip another pancake. He pats me on the back and sets his wet glass down in a countertop puddle. He swipes his lips with the back of his greasy hand and leaves. I sigh.
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My envelope is flopping around like a fish in the drawer so I resuscitate it with more ink. All at once he pops his sweaty head back in the door. He taps his cheek in a come hither manner and leans in for a kiss. I don’t see the 38-year old man, but the 17-year old boy who was my best friend in high school. I see those same teasing eyes and cute smile and I melt a little bit. Around the edges at least. Even if he doesn’t see me for how my heart beats on paper, he sees me as his wife. His friend. But not as a cohort in discovery through the written word.
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Dang those books and movies where the man “gets” his wife and has a soft spot for her literary escapades and begs to read her words. Dang them all to pieces. It just doesn’t happen like that. I reckon it’s cause we don’t live a Hallmark movie sorta life. Nor are we pressed between the pages of a hardback book. Ours is just a real one with grit and goo and arguments and feelings and bills and broken lawn mower blades.
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Ugh.
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He simply takes my kiss and goes back outside. I let feelings of teenage love slide and replace it with bitter thoughts. These fester while I tend to another skillet of pancakes. By the last pancake I am covered in all manner of resentment. It sticks like syrup. What am I? Does he see me? Does he know me? Am I only the laundry lady & cook & toilet-scrubber & dinner-maker?
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I lick my wounds and ink my poetic angst on the envelope and write around the
beans
lettuce
tomatoes
bananas
& oranges.
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I set the table, place a hot pad in the center, fill the glasses with fruit smoothies and I pray: Lord, help me to see the way that he loves me. And let not my desire to write be bigger than the desires you’ve always had in mind for my heart. Help me to love my man the way You want me to. And help him to love me that way too.
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Please join my friends today at sites for:
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Darlene,
How “your heart beats on paper?” Testosterone has a way of obscuring that:) Kind of just a hormonal thing with guys I suppose. Me? I’d rather tear the keyboard up than do real work like him.
Just keep that picture of the high school boy in your mind’s eye. Sometimes I think that’s the only thing that has sustained my wife through our 19 years of marriage:) Luckily for me, she decided long ago to love me no matter how she happened to feel about me at any given time. I know she often feels like nothing more than a maid and cook in our house. But, I do love and appreciate everything she does for me/us. I’m sure he feels the same. Really!
Mister Jeff!
How are you?! It is good to see you. Haven’t seen any activity on your site this summer. Been hoping all is well with you and your clan.
Thanks for this. I know he does. I know, I know, I know. And then I get all guilty for entertaining even the wisp of an otherwise notion. It’s a roller coaster ride, but the ink & envelope help it not to fester inside.
Blessings to you and your family.
Hey, you. I know this kind of ache too. I understand this one fer sure. My man gets the creative thing because he is a musician, but it’s the time involved in crafting the good write that he doesn’t understand. *sigh*. I think we all need to say that prayer, Darlene. Love is sooo complicated. Isn’t that wonderful?
Miss Laura,
Indeed, that what is worthy and wonderful is not always simple. I don’t know how it’s done outside of the Lord’s grasp.
Blessings.
Ink on paper in the middle of mundane. That’s what I love. Flipping pancakes with a pen in my hand. Folding clothes with paper nearby. Almost dreaming yet reaching for the pencil in the dark. One hand typing rocking a grandbaby in my arms. Taken in parts I see frustration. Looked back on I see a life.
Miss Pamela,
Thanks you for stopping by and for sharing this. It’s really what I need today.
Blessings.
I so love your honesty, Darlene, and I understand that struggle between who you are to yourself and who you are to others. Life and relationships seem like such balancing acts at times. This was a beautiful account of that tension.
Miss Kathy,
I didn’t know how to explain it, but it is a tension of sorts, aye?
And a literary compliment from ya deserves a whole platter of pancakes, my friend.
Blessings.
The artistry of black and white versus color. How needful they both are to complete our understanding of what we see. Write on, my friend … and cherish those kisses all the while there is ink on your hands.
Miss Susan,
Hat-tip and nod to you ma’am. And I do. I cherish the kisses.
Blessings.
oooh… flippin those pancakes and packin a punch with that pen, Darlene. My envelope is flopping around like a fish in the drawer so I resuscitate it with more ink. Dang Darlene… Keep up the good work. Thank you for letting me have breakfast wtih you this mornin. I would have asked for more coffee and given you one of those looks that tells you I understand. I’m thanking God that I found this community filled with people who get it. =)
Miss Patricia,
I’m glad you stopped by… thanks for passing out the kudos.
Blessings.
Oh, Darlene…this is absolutely perfect. I suspect that many of us know this tension exactly…though it likely plays out in different ways for each of us. My wonderful husband truly cannot understand why I cannot leave the house without a tote filled with paper/pens/markers/books….and wouldn’t the laptop be wonderful, too? And when words flow and I’m sitting in the dark, typing away, oblivious to the time until he wakes up and finds me still in the same clothes I was wearing when he went to bed and he can’t understand what could possibly be so important that I never went to bed. I’ve learned to smile and not react…and understand that he simply doesn’t understand any more than I understand his need to own a Harley.
Miss Patricia,
Good, I am glad I’m not the only one in the club, but I think I may understand the need for a Harley cause it’s likely related to my husband’s need for his horses… something to do with power and going fast. Vrrrrrmmmm! Ha.
Blessings.
Dera Darlene: This was so real that I could hear the flapjacks hitting the pan! You are a real hoot and I am glad I stumbled upon your blog. I just love your sense of humor and the pictures you paint with words. I will most definitely be back! Can’t wait to hear more! Lori
I get this tension. I’m married to a farmer.
He laughs at the weird way I think, and my obsession with the written word, and the way I carry a notebook everywhere. I laugh at the way he smells.
He does, however, read my blog posts every day, and that speaks love to me.
I love this post and your words have expressed my heart also. I began a blog a year ago and never dreamed I had so much written word(poetry sometimes too) to share because that’s how I express my heart. Unlike Jennifer, he doesn’t read my posts:( I know it’s not because he doesn’t love me, it truly is all those dang bills, arguments, repair jobs, dang Braves games everynight that keeps him ever occupied from visiting the places my ink dares to dabble!
I know I am a stranger, but I love to stop here often and fill up on your simple self!
“does he see me? does he know me?”
Oh, Darlene. Your heart is laid bare here…
This is so powerful.
Darlene, your words brought me right into your kitchen with you. It’s hard for others, including husbands to understand us writers, and the inherent need we have to express ourselves on paper. It’s ok, I understand how you feel. God had a sense of humor when he created men and women and said to become one in marriage, don’t you think? But differences are beautiful!
So good. Yes, I read it a few weeks ago and commented then, too, but just had to come back and say hello again.
… Glad to see this one featured at TheHighCalling.org today.
I get this. Charles is engineer head to toe. But, I was an engineer once, so that helps.
And…YEAH, I’m with you on those movies that mess up everyone’s expectations and distort reality. Ugh.
I don’t have a husband to ask those questions of (though I wish I did), there are a lot of people in my life who just don’t get my writing life, why it’s like breathing to me. This was so good, Darlene.
Oh Darlene, I love your raw honesty here. It’s gritty. And I do love gritty. My husband is an English professor so he does sort of get it (although he’s more Moby Dick and Walden Pond than 21st century, but I’ll take what I can get).
My parents, on the other hand, now that’s another story. When I first started writing the blog, my mom called to say, “What’s this blod all about? [ and yes, she did call it a blod]. I don’t understand why you’re doing this…” She sounded almost personally offended.
But now, two years later, both my parents read “the blod” every day. My dad prints out the post each morning so my mom can read it at breakfast. And while I cringe at the loss of trees, I am wooed by their loyalty and love.
I am married to an artsy hubby, but I know the pain of being different and seeing the world through a writer’s eyes…always apart, never quite in the moment because it’s not really real until I write it down…thanks for your honesty and eloquence!
I so get this. The sorting through the papers and napkins and even bills to be sure the pulp doesn’t end up in the compost. My guy is very supportive–though he really doesn’t get how my pen must travel and camera must snap even if it means two days of dishes wait on the sink and I dewrinkle the same load of clothes over and over. He seldom reads my writing. He keeps me more steady, though. And I help him stop and look.
And so God gives us writing friends whose hearts beat in tune . . .
This is oh-so-good. I am encouraged today by your words.
My husband doesn’t get it, either. I don’t get his obsession with Baylor football. But he loves me and I love him. That’s why I have writing girl friends.
What beautiful and heartfelt sharing you have laid before us.
I wonder how it would be to imagine your husband’s world of horses, grease and oil as art? My hands are more often on a camera button these days, but many of my years have been full of oil, gas, wood splinters, and smells of grass. And, the satisfaction of work done by sweat and muscle. His need for order and logic through math and chemistry (the engineers mindset) may be his way of explaining the world to his satisfaction and in his way–just like you need to do with words and a pencil. And isn’t that art? A way of articulating what sense we’ve made of the world.
It sure would be nice if husbands and wives could appreciate each other’s “art,” wouldn’t it? Maybe the real thing we all want is for our spouses to appreciate us, and accept us. And since our words (or photos, or horses, or “farm smells” –love that Jennifer!) are so much of who we are, we want others to appreciate those things as well.
Thanks for reminding us the need to appreciate each other!
Bill
Love the post. Love your voice…”dang, those movies and books…”
One of my favorite posts from you, my friend.
Of all the things to understand, words meant to communicate, can be the most difficult and the easiest to misunderstand. It’s especially true when an observer sees us writing, not doing anything practical, just sitting, or leaning over the counter, writing. I’ve wondered why we do it too, when so much of it goes unread. But, as you know, it has its own rewards. I think of writing as living everything that I miss as life goes by. It’s ok even when nobody else gets it.
Thi is my first time here. I enjoyed this blog, and can really relate in some ways. It’s hard not to grow frustrated when you don’t feel related-to/ “gotten”. I hope you’ll keep this up, you’re quite good at it. God Bless.