I Think I've Made A Terrible Mistake

DadApaLen here. I've decided to sometimes add to this Blog some stories about our lives together. It helps with my writing and more importantly it helps to let readers of this Blog know about our most wonderful life together. Some stories are funny. Some are poignant. All are about MomOmaKathryn and our relationship and adventures. So enjoy this one from a day in the second month of our marriage.

I think I’ve Made a Terrible Mistake

Early in our marriage, things were going incredibly, blissfully, blithely well for me. Each day was a mirror of the last one. I got up, ate the breakfast lovingly, carefully prepared for me, walked to work at AT&T Long Lines, went to lunch midday, walked home in the evening, ate the dinner lovingly, carefully prepared for me, read the paper laid just so by the side of the armchair for me and went to bed. Saturdays involved playing basketball with my friends or watching something on TV. Evenings were usually spent at a movie or other entertainment. On Sundays, we sometimes went to church. I always had a nap.

I thought things were going well for Kathryn too. Her life apparently was a little different than mine. Each day, she got up early, made our bed when I got up, fixed breakfast for both of us, washed our breakfast dishes, made lunches for both of us, cleaned up the kitchen, dashed off to Olympus High in our single car to teach school, went grocery shopping after school, came home, cleaned the apartment, made dinner, ate, washed the dishes, cleaned up our apartment, paid whatever bills needed to be paid, corrected papers to be handed back to students the next day in class, prepared her lesson for the next day, joined me in bed and went to sleep. Weekends for her included doing the deep cleaning, taking out the garbage, and doing whatever she had not done or completed during the week.

We were married in August, 1965. By early October of that year, almost exactly 2 months after we exchanged wedding vows, I noticed Kathryn seemed to be crying a lot. Many evenings she went to bed in tears. I could not leave it unmentioned any longer. This was not right. I could not fathom the cause of her pain, but I would find out what troubled her. Finally, one evening at dinner, when she had been crying ever since coming home from school, asked, “Kathryn, what’s the matter.” She looked at me, looked at her plate, looked at me, paused, and then said, “Well, Leonard, I think I’ve made a terrible mistake!”
I was quick enough to realize she was talking about me and our marriage. Like her mother had said, Leonard was really getting the best part of this deal. I was not living in accordance with any pattern I had seen in my home. My father was exceptionally helpful and participative on his own initiative. I had simply fallen into the pattern on my own.

I was shocked, embarrassed and ashamed. I apologized sincerely and asked if she would be willing to talk through the situation then and there and resolve it. The ensuing conversation set the pattern for our lives. It resulted in a mutually agreed upon approach to all of our responsibilities. We would chose the one’s we liked, divide fairly the ones, we hated and simply share and do the one’s we were indifferent to. We resolved then and there that our primary allegiance was to each other and our future family. Relationships with friends, past, present and future, would take second seat to our obligations to each other. There would be no vacations from the marriage for either of us, unless we each felt it would be the best thing to do (It never has been.) That painful, beautiful night clearly changed our lives. We have lived faithfully by those understandings ever since. We are comfortable in reminding each other of and discussing breaks in the pattern. It was perhaps the single most important night of our entire marriage. I vowed then and there that Kathryn was going to get the best part of this deal from then on. No matter what I do however, her Mother was indeed correct. I still “got the best part of this deal.”