Last week my husband asked me to pick up some yogurt for him. While this news will leave most of you unmoved, I expect that our children and close friends are gasping in astonishment. To put it mildly, my husband is not a yogurt person. Not only does he not eat it; he recoils at the idea of eating it. Until last week, that is.
His newly acquired food tastes are part of a scary phenomenon that has been taking place in our home lately. We have been partners in many ventures since our marriage, but we each had our distinct areas of expertise. While we shared educational philosophies regarding our children, the bulk of day to day homeschooling fell in my domain. While we shared the mission of providing access to Torah knowledge, my husband assumed the majority of the teaching. Sharing a longing for Shabbat tables filled with guests, I planned and executed the cooking while he accepted responsibility for planning and guiding the table conversation. This distribution of tasks worked well for us over a prolonged period.
When we started our publishing enterprise a few years ago, we became full-fledged business partners as well. Our skills complemented one another’s. My spouse had grand ideas and vision; I was detail and reality oriented. He barreled through obstacles; I preferred to bypass them. He viewed deadlines as suggestions; I saw them as cast in stone. As our venture grew we both came to see that each of our ways was needed at different times. Accompanying that understanding was a flexibility and recognition of the value of the other’s proclivities. At this point, we sometimes find ourselves arguing for each other’s position rather for than our own instinctive one.
This collaboration of minds is leading to some weird experiences. Once, during a family boating adventure, we found ourselves in a small, coastal village. As a special treat that evening, we attended the local movie theater’s showing of the movie Freaky Friday. In it, a mother and daughter switch bodies while retaining their individual personalities, completely befuddling those around them (as well as terrifying themselves). At the time, the premise of the movie seemed fanciful. After the yogurt episode I expect our children will be wondering if, rather than being a fictional plot, that old movie was instead a peek into the future.
too cute! I find myself in similar circumstances with my husband. He is the dreamer, I am the detail person. He sees things as they could/should be, I see things as they are and am very happy to work in that place. But lately, I have seen a merging of the two. It has not only breathed fresh air into our almost 28 years of marriage, but it has opened up new doors of opportunity to share God’s love and His Word with others. We too are looking at opening our home to others –he would do the cooking and shmoozing, I would do the “second banana” stuff (and I guess some shmoozing too)
Thanks for the encouragement that we are moving in the right direction 🙂