Dear Jil,
Thank you so much for the congratulatory message on my wedding anniversary. I’m indeed blessed to have met my wife. She’s a gem and almost on a daily basis I thank God for giving her to me. I said “almost on a daily basis” because I’m making allowance for statistical variation, but I’m pretty sure of the average. I do pray YOUR husband has cause to thank God for you daily. You should work towards that. You raised a number of questions about her – her qualities; you want to know what makes her special, why her. You’ll need to provide a big notebook for me to write her qualities out for you.
I know she’s a beautiful woman. I’ve heard that on so many continents I’m almost tone deaf! But strangely that wasn’t the basis of my attraction to her. Sounds implausible but it’s the truth. The visual appreciation came post facto. Appeals to the vanity in me though. We men are like that! If a man tells you your looks don’t matter, he’s lying! Either that or he’s come up with an ingenuous way of keeping men’s eyes off you! If you believe him, better believe Obama is running for President in Nigeria in 2015 under the PDP flag! Thank God my wonderful father-in-law never used her beauty as computational basis for her dowry! My wife is a visual delight – an aesthetical flavonoid to the bitterleaf ugliness of this conjecture we call life. She is a mellifluous softener of the hard edges of my struggles on this existential plane – my delightsomeness. She speaks and life melts its knots away. She’s a euphonious bradycardia inducing rhapsodizer to the harsh unpoetic riffs on life’s rap sheet. An incunabulum transported into this clime and time – the bands of the cradle of my domestic tranquility. Please forgive me if I speak so hagiographically of her. I am a grateful man. I’m sure you’ll want your husband to speak so well of you. Pray you get a man who appreciates your qualities.
My wife is a kind woman, a very kind woman. She’s sacrificial, never seeking acknowledgment for the good she does. Just appreciation. She’s tolerant, accommodating, simple, preternaturally peaceful. No issues, no drama except her dressing- a causerie of simple cuts with tinges of classic drama.
She’s talented with fashion. I’ve heard of people waking up on the wrong side of the bed. It’s either we’ve been buying rare beds, or God failed to install capacity for identifying the wrong side of the bed in her. When I think of her I say to myself: Either I’ve done something so wonderful for God, or God loves me with gracious bias. I’m more inclined to the later seeing how imperfect I am in all my ways. We are all so imperfect. At the end of the day marriage is a relationship of two imperfect beings in an institution ordained by a perfect God. His grace shepherds the detritus of our imperfections, recycling and reconfiguring them into channels of mercy. I KNOW that God loves me for the simple reason He gave me this woman. Some blessings are custom made.
She loves me without questioning, accepts me without judgment. It’s that basic. I am me.
My wife is my friend- a very, very true and dear friend. We pretty much spend all the time together. That is important to her. And we’re very happy in each other’s company. I look forward to going home after work every day. That’s the kind of home she created. She’s a home maker despite her busy schedule as corporate executive. And I love home!
But I do have my complaints. So many complaints in fact! I’ll give you some: She forces me to exercise thrice a week, even got an instructor for us. It’s a punishment I participate in joyfully. And every weekday morning I have to watch who I consider the “Oprah” of Christendom- @JoyceMeyer. The television is permanently tuned in the morning to @JoyceMeyer. I know the TV won’t cooperate with me if I try to change the channel, so I just leave things be. Did I tell you about the takeover of my closet? Oh, I was chased to a less spacious closet. The things men will do for love! And I have to endure visiting aquariums every time we travel. There’s something about my wife and fish. And not just fishes, even their cousins – dolphins and penguins. And then the extended family – the lions, elephants, tigers and other animals. I have been ducking safari vacations and zoos! I won’t mind malaria injection just to avoid going to the zoo. I’d rather go to a modern art museum or a planetarium. I dream of the splendour of sub-orbital flight. And then she’s feminized our home. We now have softer colours as curtains. But for my Occupy Alder Home protest I’m pretty sure the house might have been painted lilac, or worse! Oh, and I have to endure Comedy Channel. And endless reruns of Friends… I prefer Discovery Channel. She can’t understand why I watch reruns of the Bourne series either; or dramas with Angelina Jolie or Kate Winslet as stars. Neither does she understand my fascination with quantum physics, space and black holes, not to talk of Hitler! Hitler fascinates me because of the apocalyptical dimensions of his life. He’s an Antichrist study. But who says we have to like exactly the same type of TV; or love astronomy together? But because I love her I’ll go to yet another aquarium, just to make her happy. I don’t care about fishes, I care about her! She does same for me every day, visiting the life equivalence of my “aquariums”. And anyway we both love CSI, and Big Bang Theory, and Everyone Hates Chris. And I learnt to watch @JoyceMeyer. And she now has an IDEA of what will happen if she falls into a black hole. (You’ll be stretched like spaghetti).
There are some things of course I can’t tell you because you’ll think she over-pampers me. (She does and I’m proud!) I always tell my friends – “God did this one thing for me – He gave me a wonderful woman.”
I do hope you will give cause to your husband to celebrate you.
Your loving mentor, LA.
Today’s #Letr2Jil is a loving tribute to my wife on our wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary Darling!
There are a lot of hidden lessons in today’s letter. Can you identify them?
©Leke Alder 2013