I’ve been writing articles about marriage for six months now, and it occurs to me that anyone who might regularly be reading them might have some notion that I really know what I’m talking about, and that I have a picture perfect marriage every single day. Ha! There are days when my husband and I want to throttle each other. We have fewer days like that than we used to, but occasionally we still tangle.

Being married means realizing that you are two beautifully imperfect human beings with wonderfully human frailties and idiosyncrasies. You will not always be in sync or agree about everything. You will disagree, argue, and even fight. Add the imperfections and annoyances of lovely little children (who become crazy hormonal teenagers), and there are bound to be occasional fireworks.

So I thought it would be fun to “out” myself as a flawed, human marriage partner and parent. There have been memorable arguments over the years at my house.

It was Halloween. Four children were running around my kitchen in frenzied enthusiasm as I tried to get dinner on the table before sending them out to get sugared up. Each child was trying to get my attention at the same time for Halloween costume and makeup. I felt like a broken record telling them that I would take care of everything after dinner. “Unless you have a job, get out of the kitchen before someone gets burned.” I was getting no help from anyone, including my husband. My nerves were frazzled, and it was just a matter of time before a kitchen accident would happen. They all knew my strict rule of staying out of my little kitchen while I was cooking unless they were actually helping. It was irritating beyond measure that my husband was oblivious to the whole thing.

Someone had given our children a large bag of pre-popped popcorn. I don’t know how much popcorn was in it, or what it weighed. It was a large enough bag that probably 20 pounds of potatoes would have fit inside. For lack of a better place to put it, it was standing in the corner of the kitchen. I suddenly remembered something my father used to do. When all heck was breaking loose, this gentle soul would bang his fist on the kitchen table and shout “Hey!” at the top of his lungs. When it became silent, he would quietly say to my mother, “First you have to get their attention.” Then he would quietly go about resolving whatever issue(s) needed to be resolved. Remembering Dad’s words, I shut off the burners on the stove, grabbed the bag of popcorn, and threw it at the wall. Popcorn was everywhere! It was suddenly so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. I had their attention.

I didn’t say a word. I grabbed my purse and car keys and went for a drive. I’m sure my children thought Halloween was over. By the time I got back, the popcorn was all cleaned up, my family had eaten dinner, the dishes were done, and the kitchen was spotless. I quietly took each child one by one, helped them with their costumes and put on their makeup. Not a word was spoken. They all quietly filed out the front door with their dad to go Trick-or-Treating, and I heated up the apple cider and opened up the donuts for their return. The kids had forgotten about the whole thing by the time they came home, and my husband was very attentive to my every need until bedtime.

Throwing food at the wall happened one other time, only the second time it was a plate of spaghetti—not such an easy cleanup as popcorn. It did get my husband’s attention.

Admittedly, I am directionally challenged. I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag.   To make matters worse, I don’t do north, south, east, and west; and my husband doesn’t know his right hand from his left. This can make a trip to a new neighborhood interesting, and a family vacation challenging. We have had so many discussions in the car that my husband has learned to direct me with his index finger while never making a break in the conversation. My children call his index finger the Liahona, which refers to a directional compass in The Book of Mormon. This method usually works, but there are times when I am convinced he has a crook in his finger.

Our current issue is my husband’s lack of ability to dress. We are aging, and our backs and arms don’t move like they used to move. He wears one-piece coveralls every day except Sunday, temple day, and special occasions. Every Sunday, as he puts the suspenders on his suit pants, they get all tangled in the back, and he can’t reach to make sure they are straightened out. When he puts on his suit coat, he looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. So I straighten out his suspenders, and he snarls at me because they are already straight. Apparently, if they look good in front, they automatically look good in back. Sigh.

One Sunday recently, I just ignored the wonky suspenders because I didn’t feel like getting snarled at before church. We hadn’t been in church ten minutes before some old High Priest walked up to him, straightened his suspenders, and said, “Doesn’t your wife check you out before you leave the house?” I wanted to slug somebody! This brings us to the day I am writing this article. As we were headed out the door on our way to the LDS temple this morning, I straightened his suspenders, he snarled, and I yelled at him. Obviously, this was not exactly how we wanted to begin our spiritual day at the temple. Sigh. It was a quiet 20-minute ride to the temple grounds, and then we sat in the parking lot and apologized before we went in to the temple. Ironically, earlier in the morning my oldest daughter called and mentioned that she thinks it is cute that we have such a sweet time in the temple together. Double sigh.

Later in the day, after temple and lunch, we stopped to purchase a birthday gift for a grandchild. My husband let me know that my slip was showing a little. I was tempted to point out to him the comparison of my thankful reaction about the slip to his snarling over the suspenders, but decided to let our good day at the temple stand. Hopefully, he already got the suspender message.

Now that you know my marriage is normal and human, what do we do with incredibly bad days? We repent. We dust ourselves off, apologize (sometimes when we don’t even really mean it, or even want to mean it), we forgive, and we move on to a new day. We know that someday down the line we will laugh at this day (maybe). If not, we at least got through it. After you get through a certain amount of bad days, you begin to realize that there are many more good days than bad ones. It is always best to concentrate on the good things in life, and that most definitely includes marriage.

Marriage

To read all of Tudie Rose’s article on marriage, click the picture.

I would much rather remember the “empty nest” Halloween eating take out Chinese in the rose garden at the park while watching children Trick-or-Treat in the neighborhood, than that other awful Halloween drive with my kitchen full of popcorn. It is more fun to remember playing board games on New Year’s Eve with my family than to remember building a patio cover with my husband when neither of us is a carpenter and we didn’t have the right tools. There is great wonder and delight in remembering the look on my husband’s face as he held our babies for the first time, but I’d like to forget the anger in his face as we fought over how to handle a certain problem we were having with one of our teenagers.

That’s the magic potion, if there is one, to marriage. Remember the good days and try to put the kind of days described in the children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst, out of your mind.

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