Word Count: 227
Lord help me, I never saw the child within the man. It was too easy to look instead at his girth, the broad shoulders, the tower with the light shining blink-blink-blink above me.
Some women will put down their man, all men, to rise above their own failings. I never did. It was more comforting to have him to depend on, to trust, to believe he knew much, much more than I.
And he did; a scholar, an engineer with his mind unconvoluted by tunnels and rolls but blueprinted out with such perfect lettering. Yet the simplest things weren’t drawn in.
Like noticing changes in his own body. Like mentioning changes hidden from me. Like considering that life doesn’t always know its own ending, its own expiration date. And how, with the proper protection you can use eggs beyond the blue stamp.
After surgery he came home quiet, even quieter than he’d been all along. The strong, silent man I had married had overnight, turned into a clam.
Yet he let me feed him, change the tubes, wake him for medicine, wash him down with a sponge from a bowl of soapy warm water. How gentle, how gentle I touched him, dried him with stove-heated towels. Somewhere inside was the child that he finally let himself be. And that turned me into a woman.
