How Did I Get So Lucky?

CAUTION: this is an overly gushy post about my husband – that guy, right there, in that picture. That’s us when we first met in 1987 and then a few years ago in the bakery. 

Ok so here’s the thing, last week my post came to me at the very last minute of my self-imposed deadline of a post every Friday.  I told myself that I was going to take a break from writing, a vacation from the endlessly searching for words. Then, all of a sudden all these words fell out of my brain and onto the “page” as I was listening to my husband and my daughter talk about money. 

Some days you realize how lucky you are, luckier than you ever thought was possible. I was sitting on the couch folding a never-ending pile of laundry while my baby chicken sat in our office with my husband.  She’s a public high school English teacher with a mountain of student loans; she is also extremely independent and because I raised a strong independent woman, she decided to take on her student loans and the governmental loan forgiveness mess without our help.  She wanted to do it herself, and my husband and I let her take care of her business.  Fast forward to a year later, and it turns out she signed up to a scam of sorts.

So there sat my baby chicken and my husband going through that whole loan forgiveness mess, credit reports, and money.  All of these things I’m horrible at and gladly let him take care of, much like a 1950’s housewife. (Please don’t take my feminist card!!!), but as I was folding the hundredth pair of shorts, I heard him say to her, “have you ever pulled your credit report before? No? Ok, that’s what I figured, so I pulled one for you.”  My chicken looked at her report and asked if it was good? I heard that all too familiar shake in her voice, the shake that indicated tears were near and then I heard my ever patient, ever calm husband say, “No honey, it’s good, it’s really good.”   I could hear an audible sigh of relief. 

My husband took care of the scam and paid that off for her and then told her we would assume the rest of the payments.   We have always promised we would pay both kid’s student loans after paying for their Master and bachelor degrees, last week we paid off the boy’s student loans, and now it was the girl’s turn.  Her independent self couldn’t stop herself from protesting, saying she wanted to do it herself.  And then that’s when it happened, when I realized how very very lucky I was, my husband in his calm voice said: “honey, let us take care of this, let us take care of you.” There I was on the couch with tears in my eyes.  The number of things this man has done for my chickens and me to make our lives better is immeasurable.  The number of grateful tears we have cried because we have never been taken care of the way he does selflessly would fill, at the very least, a swimming pool.  

At the beginning of our relationship, it was tough for me to let go of things when it came to my chickens.  I was and still, am very protective of them. A lot of that is just normal feelings every mother feels for her kids, but a large part of it came from that awful ex-husband you’ve heard me talk so much about and his threats to take my kids from me.  It’s also funny how that same ex-husband who would threaten to take the kids from me because of my poor mothering skills never put dime one towards their college tuition or anything else that came with the kids after they stopped living with him.  I take that back; he did, when I had the bakery, give the girl chicken $2,000 for college.  So he did contribute, he put in $2,000 towards the combined total of over $300,000 it cost for those aforementioned Master and Bachelor degrees.  But his post isn’t about that man; this post is about the man who took 2 hours out of his busy day to go through the scam and help adjust the girl’s budget.  She left our apartment that evening, smiling and calm and relieved.

After the girl chicken had left our apartment, my husband and I were standing in the kitchen cooking dinner; I was standing over my chicken with tears coming down my face. I put down the mallet, looked at my husband, and just said “thank you” he put my face in his hands and kissed away those tears.  I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve this man, but I am most thankful for him.

He will read this post and be angry at me for putting it all out there for the world to read, but sometimes I have to let people know what an exceptional man he is.