If you’ve seen either the movie or the play, “Fiddler on the Roof”, you know of the famous “Do you love me?” dialogue-song between Tevye and Golde. The emotionally serious and comical interchange between husband and wife offers insight into a husband’s insecurities and a wife’s belief that her actions, not her words, should be sufficient evidence of her love for her husband (an obvious reversal of traditional gender stereotypes regarding a husband’s and a wife’s need for communication and affirmation of love).
My wife and I are coming up on our 11-year wedding anniversary and our 15-year anniversary of when we started dating, so we have been together for a while… I am lucky to be married to such a wonderful woman who is so amazing in so many ways (I am trying to strike a balance here, between being too mushy, yet complimentary enough so that my wife doesn’t give me hell about this blog or make it less convenient for me to train for the triathlon, so I apologize to you, the reader, for erring on the side of being a little more mushy than less). Lucky for me, I don’t need to ask the question, “Do you love me?” – I know my wife loves me.
Let me take you back to this past Monday night (I will try my best to condense a longer story). My wife and I were out for the night in NYC with my brother-in-law and his wife, celebrating the 4th of July. I was walking with my BIL and my wife was walking with my SIL, and soon enough, I noticed that my wife and SIL stopped following my BIL and I back to our car, choosing to take a different route. I told my BIL that we should go ahead and follow my wife and SIL, and not correct them if they lead us in the wrong direction. We followed until we were a block and a half past the car, when my wife finally asked if I knew where the car was. “Of course I do,” I responded. My wife said to me, “You wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t ask, right? You were laughing at me the whole time!” My wife knows me all too well.
So, fast forward to last night, as I ran out of the house to Team In Training’s Wednesday night team swim training. I went to the closet where we keep our towels, grabbed a yellow towel, ran to give my two daughters a kiss goodnight (my son was already asleep), and turned around to see my wife doubled over in laughter.
“Look at your towel. Go get another one.”
I thanked my wife, gave her a kiss goodbye and said, “I have no idea why you told me about this; you know that I wouldn’t have said anything to you.” She nodded, knowingly.
I know my wife still loves me. If she didn’t, I would have been using this towel to dry off in front of 25+ triathlon teammates.
