FORCES OF NURTURE : One man’s dream is his wife’s nightmare
Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Not so long ago, the transportation reporter — who sits across the aisle from me in the newsroom — leaned over with a grin.
“Hey, Cathy ! Your husband’s been asking me about that new four-lane highway that’ll run from Small-Town Arkansas to Big-City Arkansas.”
He laughed. Evilly. “You moving ?”
It’s an issue I’ve been dodging for years — my husband’s fascination with rural living.
He wants to live among the pine trees.
I want to live within 15 minutes of a mall.
You see the problem.
As a former country girl, I know of what I speak: Green Acres ain’t the place for me.
But Hubs continues to romanticize himself into some weird Pa Ingalls alternate universe. Trust me, I am not Ma material. (If any woman ever was entitled to a life of wine, mood enhancers and hourly cussing rants, it was Caroline of the Freaking Prairie. Poor soul. )
But I digress. Back to Hubs and his romance with all things rural.
It’s difficult to fight fantasy. I tell Hubs the country is... well... isolated and lonely and inconvenient, and I might as well be telling a 12-year-old boy that the girlie-magazine models he’s gawking at are air-brushed and cosmetically enhanced.
But here’s the thing. Hubs has only ever visited the country. To live in the country, miles away from any friends, at least 45-60 minutes from work, far, far away from certain conveniences, like a coffee shop or friendly neighborhood bar — that, my friends, is a whole different matter.
I lived in the country as a wee barefoot child, as a bored, rebellious, stuck-in-the-sticks teenager and as a college freshman. I loved my upbringing — I did ! — and each night I still pay homage to the calluses I developed during all those no-shoes years.
But now I’m old. And staid. And hooked on pizza delivery and the availability of Indian food.
Hubs, however, has romanticized the notion to such a degree that none of my warnings — even those involving butting rams or rabid geese — have had any effect.
Ever been treed by a sheep ? Quite embarrassing, I assure you.
Awhile back, during all those dire bird-flu warnings, during the months I hoarded bottled water and dry goods, Hubs sought to use my hypochondria against me.
“You know, if we lived out in the country, we would be selfsufficient. We’d have a garden. I’d kill deer. When the bird flu hits, we’ll be safe from all the panicked, marauding masses.”
He leaned in closer, paused and said: “We’d be away from all the germs.”
And I admit that in the depths of my tucked-away Southern, country-girl heart, I felt... well, a flutter.
* blush *
That was enough to spur Hubs on. “Just think, we’d have everything ! No rush to the store when everyone learns that bird flu is on the way ! No next-door neighbors breathing their germy germs over our fence !”
But then, in that East Texas twang, he added: “All we’d have to do is go to Sam’s and stock up on some laundry detergent and toilet paper, the two things we can’t grow on the farm. Heh !”
My eyes narrowed. It all became clear. Hubs wasn’t seeking to hide and protect his wife and lil darlin’s. No, Hubs was thinking of how he could turn a deer camp into a home. For yearround ! Whee ! And, best of all, his wife would be urging him to go kill deer, rather than protesting it. I could see the fantasy he was creating: Hubs striding through the rugged door, made by his own rugged man-hands, bearing his family’s dinner as his wife weeps in gratitude and seven (Seven ? How’d the extras slip in there ?) children cheer. Hubs, I realized, fantasizes about being a survivalist — much in the way I once fantasized that a certain well-known coffee shop might one day open in my neighborhood. I glared at the deceptive, manipulating Hubs. “Honey, next weekend, why don’t we head down south and you can teach me how to use that big ol’ gun ? Because really, I think I’d rather pick off the marauding masses in the city one by one than awaken each morning to a gun blast from ‘our’ deer woods.” Our. Deer. Woods. More frightening words have never been spoken. Cathy Frye, a news reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has two stepteens and two children, ages 3 and 5. Also a husband. And a geriatric, deaf dog. E-mail her at
cfrye@arkansasonline. com
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