Musings from my Moral High Horse

The sun pounded insistently through the tinted windows of my fifteen-seater, behemoth, red vehicle as I drove my excited sons to a much anticipated birthday party. The conversation was wearing on my nerves like a coarse-grain sandpaper. It primarily focused around the near destruction of my husband's brand new work cell phone. In the three months since my husband began his new position, he has cracked the screen, broken the framework, and taken his phone for a swim in our pool. A few of these abuses happened within 24 hours of his receiving the phone. But, the entire disheveled and ridiculous state of his phone, is apparently my fault for not finding the funds to buy him a scuba-worthy, impact-resistant, high-tech case before he allowed his cell phone to swan dive from his front shirt pocket.

 

In addition, he has this unreasonable idea that his pants shouldn't have holes and neither should his shoes. In all, his list of sudden needs is growing, and the cost is pressing at nearly $500. As the anger and bile rose in my throat and the argument began to build in the air, he opened his mouth and uttered the implication that my needs are always put before his. I cannot truthfully say that I have heard another word he has uttered since that Saturday afternoon conversation, through the hot blood pulsing in my ears.

My righteous indignation has hung heavily in the scorching summer air for the past three days. Every time I look into his brown eyes through the lenses of his outdated prescription, I want to kick him in the threadbare seat of his holey jeans and tell him to go take a hike in his boots that have developed their own air conditioning. I look down on him from my moral high horse, and think about kicking him with my cracking and worn hand-me-down sandals.

I am scandalized by his hypocrisy when he purchases indulgent lunches off of dollar menus at least TWICE A MONTH while I sit at home and eat my lowly peanut butter and jelly with the kids. My blood boils when I think of his luxurious recreation, playing ancient video games on his high-tech, outdated computer that might still have the novelty of an six-inch floppy drive. All the while I sit at home and knit sweaters from inherited yarn for our children; I am working my fingers to the bone and only recreate to fill a need. I am waiting to be canonized for my self-sacrifice.

I know, I am being ridiculous, but it brought me to think about what being a parent entails. Yesterday was like Christmas in my little maternal world. In February, we opted to take our first vacation in seven years. When we went to leave and return home, we found that my glasses had decided to take a vacation of their own. This usually would be no big deal except that my minions had absconded with my spare set and I was left with a Vaseline-on-the-lens view of my entire world. Circumstances being what they are and my husband changing job slightly after, I have suffered in a fogged silence for five months....until yesterday when I selfishly decided that I preferred seeing to not.

My husband just left a job where he worked around dangerous and corrosive chemicals and footwear only truly became unwearable when he began to feel the burning of his own flesh through his shoes. I have mentioned before that I have a thick mane of stick-straight brown hair. I finally broke down the other day and convinced myself that I should invest the extra $2 and buy myself a sturdy hairbrush from the normal hair care aisle at the store rather than the flimsy ones that break from the dollar store. I didn't even get to use my new treasure ONCE, before it was sacrificed to the girlie sleepover gods and hasn't been seen since. Not that either of us has a right to point fingers about whose needs are being neglected and who is carrying the bigger cross...up a hill....both ways....in twelve feet of snow....in corroded shoes...with our hair unbrushed.

But, it makes me grin at the irony of the NECESSITY of putting together the perfect collection of pink presents for our minion rather than buying shoes or eye wear. Not only that, but SMILING and enjoying every minute of the blurry visions of her opening her presents and only guessing that she liked them because I was sitting more than a foot away, so it is uncertain. I have decided that the phenomenon of “Mom-jeans” is more a matter of purchasing the cheapest, albeit poorly designed, jeans to cover your nakedness while still having the funds to delight your minions.

Anyway, I guess that the entire point of this short play-by-play recap of my brief marital distress is intended to express sympathy for those parents who are buying bicycle inner tubes before underpants, Barbie dolls and basketballs before brushes and bobby pins, bedazzled dance costumes before dental care. Wear those frump-butt-mom-jeans and holey shoes like a rockstar, because you are not alone!