Tonight at dinner I asked my husband how we could clean the windows in our house. I was wondering whether we should hire someone or if we could take them apart and do it ourselves.
Suddenly Ted got up from his seat, put his chopsticks down, and walked towards a window in the dining room wall. He started tinkering with the spring system, figuring out how to get the window off of the track.
Then I was standing beside him, holding the square of glass on a chair, my dinner also abandoned. Two curtain rods had been taken out of the window frame, the draperies resting on the floor. Ted experimented with the spring rods, trying to figure out how to assemble the window again.
I’m grateful that Ted responds to my questions. I’m glad he wants to fix things. But I often wonder why he tries to fix it right away. I try not to ask him. I try to appreciate what he does. But I do wonder why it has to happen immediately.
Tonight my daughters took care of that for me. Our three-year-old, sitting at the table with her dinner, asked “Why, Daddy?” wanting to know why he had decided to take the window apart in the middle of our dinner.
“‘Cause I’m a man,” he said, and continued, stating that men sometimes did things like this.
After all these years, I’m grateful for an answer! 🙂
