“Curva peligrosa” the sign warns. I see this sign a lot during the drive from Todos Santos to Cabo San Lucas. In fact, dangerous curves abound on the entire Baja peninsula. I slow down. I don’t take the curve at high speed. I’m diligent when I’m driving. I pay attention.
I have seen lots of highway warning signs and heeded them. Why not heed life’s little warning signs?
Often I’m a bonehead and an ignoramus who would rather not do any serious heeding. That would just be too wise, and apparently, I am not that wise. Oh, I do learn. Of that you can rest assured. It may take me a quarter of a century or so, maybe two quarters of a century, but I finally get the picture, the drift, the skinny! And with one lesson learned I move on to another and another.
I have learned that men do not generally enjoy sitting around talking about their feelings, let alone showing them, or even merely contemplating them. I realize that men have feelings, but they just don’t seem as intense about their feelings as women. Especially in the romance category. We like to show our feelings, to wallow in them. We sort them out like we sort the laundry. Whites in this load, colors in that load, and towels in yet another.
For the most part, men aren’t romantic creatures. Time is better spent watching cars go around and around a track, or people clobbering each other with sticks on an ice skating rink. “Get me a beer, will ya please, honey? The Seahawks are actually ahead and getting ready to make a first down.”
I should have caught on a lot sooner. In 7th grade I had a boyfriend named Roy. For celebrating Valentine’s Day I bought matching shirts for us. It seemed the very logical thing to do. We were madly in love, so we should dress alike. HA! It would tell the world of our love. It did not bother Roy to “forget” to wear the shirt to school on Valentine’s Day. While I was crushed, he shrugged it off. “No big deal,” he said. The other girls were disappointed too. None of our guys wore their shirts. I’m reminded of Bill Engvall, “Here’s your sign!”
For years I went around expecting my boyfriends to show their feelings of love for me. And better yet, I expected them to show me how much they cared about my feelings of love for them. Seldom did they oblige. Wait. There was one boyfriend who did, but most of them went out of their way to be cool as cucumbers. Cool as menthol cigarettes. All (except one) of those boyfriends mostly neglected showing feelings of passion or love or any of that silly romance stuff.
So why did I expect my husband to be any different? I think we covered that when I told you I was a bonehead, an ignoramus. It wasn’t until we’d been married about 15 years that I realized how ridiculous my expectations were. I started to look at this whole idea of showing one’s feelings in a whole new light. I don’t know if it was just that he wore me down, or what it was. I don’t know. But I simply gave up the idea that romance was in his vocabulary. He isn’t going to comment on my hair after I come home from my hair appointment either.
Instead of wishing for certain scenarios, I began to focus on the many nice things he did for me. Sometimes he’d call me just before leaving work and ask if I needed anything at the store. While I’m fixing dinner, he may slap my backside. He scolds me for not making an appointment for my annual mammogram. He does nice little things like that all the time.
Maybe I paid no attention to those little warning signs in my youth, but I finally learned. I decided I didn’t need him to be Casanova. Instead of hoping he’ll remember our anniversary, I remind him in a very overt way that our anniversary is in two weeks. ”Only two shopping weeks left,” I’ll say. He hasn’t forgotten a single anniversary since. He writes something sweet inside a funny card, and buys some flowers or chocolate or both. Because I tell him these are the things I want, he happily obliges. And it’s okay. I like it a lot better this way. He does too.