man's man

Our big trip got off this evening to a halting start. After work, we rushed about the house, packed the car to the gills and headed towards the freeway and out of town. M recalled at the last moment that the tire had suffered a slow leak in the preceding weeks and declared that he really ought to check the levels before we find ourselves halfway to nowhere with a flat. We pulled into a Shell station, checked the air and noted that it was perilously low. It was too late for a fix -all the shops were closed an hour past -but M assured me that the tire was leaking slowly, so we might be able to make the 4 hour drive and find a place to repair the tire on the morning after. Wary, but trusting, we roared towards the Columbia Gorge and just before we entered the scenic area the car's "Low Pressure" light started blinking it's frantic warning, so we turned around pronto and headed for home, defeated and irritable.

So much for a late night arrival and early morning hikes in the crisp desert air. We would have to overnight at home and get the tire repaired the following morning, delaying our trip by 12 hours or so. I was disproportionately crushed, considering the seriousness of the situation (pregnancy can do strange things to you), and upon arriving home I promptly locked myself in the bathroom and bawled like an infant. I had been working so hard of late and so rarely do I take a day off work, to lose but a few hours of freedom and fun seemed devastating. Poor M felt like a heel. And I didn't do much to let him off, I confess. But the truth is, he's just not much of a car guy and these sorts of things repeatedly escape him.

I remember when M and I first hooked up, I got an incredulous interrogation from my father concerning M's man's-man credentials: "Doesn't he know how to change the oil? -How about fixin' a flat? -Hasn't he ever operated a miter saw? -ever worked a garden?" Enthralled with M's lofty and high flown traits (compared especially with those of my father) -- his intelligence, grace, and sensitivity -- I retorted: "Can you play guitar? -ever try to read ancient Greek? -How are your UNIX skills?" He shut up awfully quick.

Since those days, my dad has come to love M like a son, but I still think he wonders how on earth we're getting by out here, alone in the wild west, without a grease monkey on hand. The one time my family came to visit several years back, my dad went to work around the house, fixing the sagging gutter and changing the seal on the toilet (with his bare hands, at that!). He worked tirelessly as if to take care of all the business my wonderful but delinquent husband left undone.

And I admit that tonight I wished for a fraction of a second that M had just a tiny bit of my father in him. But when M got teary eyed and swore that he was sorry and that he "ruined everything" I felt bad for making such a crazy-pregnant-lady scene. I hugged away his awful, sinking feeling, and we ordered Thai food and made a fun night of it after all.

And tomorrow we're off...I think...