Do You See What I See?

Last Monday my husband had cataract surgery.  It's his second time around, so he knew what to expect and wasn't all that nervous.  Still, in medical situations more than anywhere else he points out to anyone within earshot that I'm his husband.  The results have run the gamut of a rude Yeah, I know and then pointedly ignoring me (in return we filed a complaint and nixed that nurse practioner from any further contact with us) to Together fifteen years?  You could show us straight folks a thing or two.

When the post-op nurse came to retrieve me from the waiting room, I could tell she was at ease with the relationship.  Still, she was a woman of a certain age and accustomed to the traditions of marriage---which apparently includes a similar age among the two parties involved.

We were walking down past the numerous patients recovering in their curtained surroundings when she asked me: "Have you had cataract surgery?

I glanced over at her, my gray-blue eyes surely flashing just a little.  "No."

"Oh."

It was, of course, only her way to make her small talk seem both professional and personal, but I considered what she saw in me---perhaps a sexy sixty-something, but the question merely made me feel a fugly forty-five. 

For once my husband looked his age and a bit groggy.  He lay there listening to the nurse delineate all the dos and don'ts---a list she surely mumbles in her sleep, although her delivery at that moment was again striking that balance between professional and personal.

"Okay, then," she announced.  "You're free to go."

We all held our breath for a moment, not quite knowing what to expect from one another.  My husband slipped from the gurney and though steady enough his body language expressed an uncertainty.  Subconsciously I heard something---was it the nurse, saying take his hand---and so I did.  Hand holding comes naturally to some couples, and it's certainly lauded between men and women, but since it's not publicly permitted for us, it isn't a habit of ours outside the gayest of ghettos.

So there I was, gently holding my husband's hand as we paraded past the patients.  From their blurry perspective I was merely a good son, holding Daddy's hand, while the nurse walked ahead us, casting glances back at the married men following her.  I was starting to have an identity crisis.

The nurse smiled up at me when we reached the door:  "Perhaps we'll soon see you too for cataract surgery."

My husband snorted and I gave her a bristly smile back.  "I don't think so.  My vision is still nearly twenty-twenty."

"Oh.  Well, aren't you lucky."

Somewhere in the back of my head I could hear myself screaming at her I'm only forty-five years old, but my tight, upturned lips kept my thoughts to myself.

"Then I guess we won't see you two again," she continued as she opened the door.

We thanked her and turned to our audience looking back at us from the waiting room.  I dropped my husband's hand.  With a soft slap it hit his jeans, a signal to move forward.

My Husband, My Beard

The good thing about growing old is that you finally believe you can do whatever you damn well please. The bad thing? The resulting pain is simply the weight of time on your body, not a social repercussion.

And then there are those lucky few---the few that are timeless. Such as my husband.

I'm not offering this as an endearment. It's simply a fact based on fifteen years of careful observation. And discussion. Yes, we discuss his 'condition' not because we're vain or conniving but are amused by the mystery of it all.

We have decided this aura is based on his small stature. A short man can either fight his supposed shortcomings or revel in the fact that a major social expectation has been removed. The perception of power is shifted, causing strangers to relax into chatty, even forward behavior. Women find him an endearing equal, which may have its own sex appeal. Men, safe in there looming size, make the pretense to treat him as an equal, or gush over his mustache.

Yes, his handlebar mustache is definitely part of his petit mystique.

"You're so cute---you're so cute!" a woman cried out at the local Dairy Queen a few years ago. "You look like the Monopoly Man! You should go to McDonald's and see if they’ll give you a free Happy Meal!"

I was sure she'd wet her pants.

She was with her teenage daughter, and her distraction over my husband went on sporadically as we indulged in our two for one Blizzards. He happened to be away from our table when she came out of the restroom and repeated her mantra to me up close and personal, and I just smiled back at her. When she got to her table, she turned back to ask:

"Is he your dad?"

"Nope," I replied---not quite looking at her in the eye.

I heard her daughter swat her and tsk mommmm. She seemed more embarrassed by her mother's stupidity than her impropriety.

In writing this I've realized that I haven't been asked since if my husband is my father---which means I'm aging in the public eye while he remains the same. The question used to annoy me since we're so physically opposite, but now my ego might welcome it. No one believes he's almost seventy, while I must look very much forty-something.

If age has changed my husband at all, it's expressed in his increasingly matter-of-fact attitude. Recently he was being chatted up by an older woman while in line at another Dairy Queen inside a truck stop. She was momentarily distracted but still noticed when the first Blizzard was handed over to him, so when she turned back and noticed the Blizzard missing, she was shocked.

"Where did it go?!"

"Oh, I handed it over to my husband."

The trucker in front of her spun around as if my husband said he just handed it to a supermodel or a martian, but I was already safely away in the twelve volt appliance aisle.  There was nothing for them to do but duly note his truth and continue waiting for their order.

In case you haven't noticed, the evolution in facial hair continues.  There were goatees, and some men just can't leave behind what Mother called muff mouths.  Beards are still hot, but mustaches are cutting edge.  My husband has overheard the teenage boys in the coffee house murmur that's the mustache I want.  Another, hardly any older, recently flagged us to stop for a construction zone on the Feather River Highway.  He peered through the glare on our windshield which could not hide the white mustache inside.  He gestured grandly over his bare upper lip and gave the okay sign---and then hocked a big loogie.  Eventually he let us on through, but he had to lean towards my open window to voice his approval.

"That's one hell of a mustache, brother."

 I smiled wanly as he grinned beyond me, knowing I was quite invisible.  Brother?  You mean Grandpa!