A young friend of ours is getting married soon and as his luck would have it, he was stuck in a car with Sherrod and me yesterday morning. What a perfect time to talk to him about the enduring benefits of delivering breakfast in bed to one’s beloved.
This may not have been our friend’s view of the situation, but he is too polite to interrupt the woman who is four decades his senior, pontificating from the backseat of his car. I wish someone had told me when I was in my thirties that I would one day have this respectful audience. Back then, I was working in newsroom with too many men who talked over me as if I were a Bassett Hound snoozing at their feet.
We’ve been married almost 20 years, and neither of us remembers when Sherrod first brought me breakfast in bed. It wasn’t in the first year, or the tenth. We agree it must have started five years ago because it feels like forever, and that’s what we say whenever we mean something has become a part of who we are.
I suspect the first time Sherrod climbed those 15 steps with the breakfast tray, he thought it was a one-time deal. Then he saw my face. You’d have thought he’d just walked through the door holding a brand-new puppy over his head and announcing that she’s potty trained, too.
“There was no going back,” he often says, but he always smiles.
Let us not ignore the element of surprise. Sherrod has many gifts. Cooking is not one of them, except for steel cut oats, French press coffee and English muffins. Oh, and air-popped popcorn. He will read this and say, “You forgot to mention my baked potatoes and peas.” This is one of the many reasons he has never been allowed to read my columns before I share them with the world.
UPDATE: Astute readers, many of them Sherrod loyalists, remind me that Sherrod makes applesauce every fall. They’ve seen the pictures! (Sorry, honey, for this unforgivable exclusion.)
I rise early, but I am not a morning person. Sherrod shoots out of bed like a launched rocket. Immediately, our dogs, Franklin and Walter, leap up to join him as he shouts, “Okay, boys, here we go!” The three of them talk and bark all the way down the stairs. I awaken in the dark with unfriendly first thoughts and bat a few things off the bedside table in search of the lamp that never moves.
By the time Sherrod returns with the loaded tray, I’m upright and the bed is freshly made. I’m one of those people who always makes the bed first thing in the morning. I once read that this is the trait of a productive life and I like the sound of that, but it’s not my story. I am the daughter of a nurse’s aide. Making our beds was never an option. Minutes after I awaken, our bedspread is smooth and corners of the top sheet hug that mattress like cling wrap.
On the mornings when Sherrod is home, a freshly made bed gives me a Downton Abbey feeling as I sit in our tidy bed and wait for breakfast. I try to ignore our wild print of a bedspread. Imagine Lady Crowley waking up to that thing. I like solid bedding in shades of cream, but I live in a home where that quickly becomes crime scene of scattered paw prints.
You may have noticed Walter in the breakfast tray picture. He races through his own breakfast downstairs and then swoops up next to me to wait for the tray, which he then guards like a sentry at the gate. This is the only time he growls at Sherrod as if her were an intruder, which hurts Sherrod’s feelings. “I just fed you,” he tells him. “You slept on my head.”
My breakfast usually arrives on a bamboo tray engraved with our names. It was a gift from my sister Toni, and believe me, I know to mention this. I already have that potatoes-and-peas conversation coming my way; I don’t need a wounded sister on the phone. (This doesn’t mean that I love you less, Leslie. I love my sisters equally. Yes, I do.)
Occasionally, I share on social media a picture of the breakfast tray, mostly as an excuse to post another photo of Walter, who is never far from the tea cozy. These posts have prompted occasional conversations with other women’s husbands. They start out nice enough. Isn’t it sweet how Sherrod brings me breakfast in bed, they say, but their smiles never reach their eyes and I know what’s coming: “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
I get it. I went through this with the Better Mothers, back in the day. My daughter was born in 1987. We lived in a community where making your baby’s food from scratch was common in homes that were not mine. This mother was buying jars of puréed carrots, peas and prunes while those mothers cooked small batches of baby beef stew and quinoa banana mash. They loved to talk about it, too, swapping recipes with one another and extolling the high color of their babies’ cheeks as they kindly avoided looking at me.
I admired their commitment and I’m sure they didn’t mean to make me feel sniveling and inadequate. But there’s always that one.
I was exhausted, standing in line at the grocery, when the older woman in front of me peered into the denim snuggly strapped to my chest. “Aw,” she said, “your daughter looks like a Gerber baby.”
Because this is the story of my life, that one Better Mother was standing behind me and overheard. She laughed and said, “Hah, I guess we know how that happened.”
Tell me that woman wasn’t looking for a fight.
No need to relive that exchange. Instead, I want to thank again that assistant store manager who swept in between us and picked a side, handing me a free bouquet of gladiolus. “They’re called sword lilies,” he whispered.
Anyway, I’m over all that. If you’re making your own baby food today, I’m in awe of you—and now that my baby is 36, I almost don’t feel inferior as a mother.
Before I go, I want to mention the breakfast tray tip I offered to our young friend on the brink of marriage: Don’t start the routine if you think that someday you can just stop. That will be an earthquake. Forty years later, you’ll walk in the room and hear your wife say to the grandchildren gathered at her feet, “But then, on April 7, 2037, your grandfather stopped bringing breakfast to your grandma.” Their gasps will be a sword lily to your heart.
Golly, where did the time go? I woke up at 6:30 thinking I’d finish this by 9:00, but then I decided I had to find the right baby photo of my daughter. You know how that goes. You start rifling through piles of old photos and by the time you look up eight days have passed and it’s time to change the calendar.
This won’t be the last you hear from me this week. Last weekend, I took a selfie after voting to protect women’s reproductive rights here in Ohio, and shared it on all my social media accounts. I rarely do that these days, but I was trying to reach as many voters as possible.
In response, the flood of vitriol on the site we used to call Twitter—much of it attacking how I look—has me thinking about all the women who tell me why they’re reluctant, and sometimes afraid, to speak out.
There will always be people who hate a woman who is willing to share her opinions out loud. Remember this: We outnumber them.
Our next conversation, coming soon.
UPDATE: Astute readers, many of them Sherrod loyalists, remind me that Sherrod makes applesauce every fall. They’ve seen the pictures! (Sorry, honey, for this unforgivable exclusion.)
I see you in my inbox, and whatever I was about to do becomes reading you immediately. As usual there are too many lines to quote, too many parts to love 💗