Better for Worse

I never thought I’d get married.

Since I was a kid, I was told I’d be a “good husband.” I came from a two-parent household where dad paid the bills, did home repairs and improvements while my mother kept the house clean and made sure I was neat. I went to church every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday (and sometimes Thursday) -gotta love that Baptist upbringing! My parents taught manners, respect, hard work and quick to pull out the [insert whatever was nearby] if I got out of line.

In high school, I wrote 3- and 4-page love letters, poems, songs and stage plays (I was a little “extra” back then). This was before computers were fashionable, so I wrote it all by hand. I was the “nice” kid in class – the girls would cry on my shoulder and share their boyfriend problems…great. They gave me insight to the female psyche making me more aware than the average teenage boy.

College was a blur of academia and self-discovery. I taught myself how to cook gourmet meals, augmenting the soul food recipes handed down from my family. I taught myself to play the piano and sing. My decision to study marketing forced me out of my passive shell. By junior year, I was known for being beguiling towards women. I had reinvented myself into an intelligent, charming and talented twentysomething male whose arrogance only fueled my delusion of immortality.

Then the baby came during the last semester of my senior year.

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This entry was written by Fave, posted on 9 September 08 at 5:20 pm, filed under Life and tagged baby, college, cooking, decisions, family, growing up, high school, letters, Life, marriage, parents, validation, wife. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.