But he seemed like such a nice, quiet guy

Wednesday night as we waited for Australia to start, my sisters and I discussed men. Mary’s marriage imploded earlier this year, and Karen is now much less starry-eyed at the prospect of love and romance than Mary and I were when we were nineteen. Karen asked us how she could ever know if it was the right thing to marry someone. How do you know they won’t hurt you as my sister has been hurt?

Of course you can’t know.

Dick could turn out to be a mass murderer tomorrow, and I would be the last person to know.

Not really. I keep pretty close tabs on that boy.

As I’ve told my sisters before, I knew that I had to marry Dick. That he was it. When he got cold feet after we’d been engaged for about a month (remember this is also just a month after we met), I felt that my life was over, and not just in a Twilight “I love you even though you’re a vampire and sometimes want to eat me” sort of way.

Basically, I said, Dick is my evidence that there is a God and that He cares about me.

Mary turned to Karen and said, “You’d think she’d treat him better, then.”

What? I treat Dick JUST FINE.

Maybe sometimes I get exasperated by Dick’s always dwelling in the land of never-never. In the kitchen, making mincemeat pie with his dad for Thanksgiving, Dick reminds me of Anne of Green Gables, who is always so busy daydreaming she forgets to add flour.

Sometimes I can’t revel in the nice things Dick does (like taking the kids home for bed while I see a movie with my sisters) because the next morning he brings them back to my parents looking like raggedy orphans.

You know how they say that in order to counteract one criticism you have to give seven compliments? It’s like that. Dick does or says one irritating thing, and suddenly the five or six thoughtful things he did just don’t quite make up for it.

Well, today he did one small thing that I think is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

I called him early to remind him to bring me fresh clothes and my glasses, and he told me how Susan, after snuggling with him in our bed this morning, had a little accident. We are not amused, Susan. You can’t just go an entire year accident-free and then have three accidents in two days, including one in MY BED.

Dick got a bit impatient with the long list of things I needed from the house. And the butter and ice cream and bacon I needed from the store. He may even have snapped when I suggested he get a pen and paper to write this all down. Wasn’t I sympathetic that he had to FIND THE BAKING SODA and THROW THE SHEETS DOWN TO THE LAUNDRY ROOM?

So finally he made it to my parents. He told me where everything on my list was, and then he said, “I brought you a Mountain Dew.”

That he would think of this on his own, and actually remember it and try to shrug it off as “they were just sitting there right by the door to the garage” –

I don’t even know how many irritating things that counteracts, Dick. Maybe a million.

Jane