An Ode to Husbands: A Personal Memoir About How to Embrace One Another

The day I’m writing this blog is January 18, 2023. I have been trying to get from Colorado Springs, Colorado to San Juan, Argentina since Thursday at 8:30 am and it is now Friday almost 10 pm in Buenos Aires, Argentina so 6pm in Colorado. It’s been a very long trip with my father and my five-year-old daughter who is an amazing little traveler by the way. On that note, my husband is not with us; he is also an amazing traveler. I must say that is one of our favorite things to do together.

What is comical and what I am thankful for all at the same time, are the qualities he is best at, I am worst at. He is so prepared in all of the ways I am not. At this moment, we are on our last plane with all of the devices pretty much dead for all three of us (not necessarily a bad thing). I bust out my “charger bag” a bag that my husband carries around when we travel and I happen to have adapters for us all for when we arrive to our destination as well as enough chargers to charge all of the things on this airplane. It’s shocking to me. I’m the type of person who finds it to be kind of a fun challenge to run out of stuff. He is not. He always has backups of everything, I wait until I am completely out of something to bother replacing it and even then it takes up space in my head for several days or weeks before I actually replace it. In this situation us three travelers are fried. Without my husband’s preparedness, I could maybe charge my dad’s phone or my own, for sure not the iPad and without adapter’s for sure not my computer which would impact me writing this blog the moment I felt inspired.

I am deeply appreciative in this moment that I can work, that I am able to communicate because my phone is charged and that my dad and daughter are both happy campers happily charging all of those things as well. That would not ever happen without my husband.

What else is great about husbands? I mean a lot of things clearly but for the purpose of this blog we are focusing on general husbandly attributes that many of us ladies may sometimes take for granted. I don’t know about you, but I am not into manual labor-type work. Don’t get me wrong, I am a super hard worker probably to a fault and I’m not lazy. I love physical exercise, I love keeping things clean and I love productivity but let’s be real; I’m not going to mow the lawn, I’m probably not going to scrape my windshield and I’m definitely not going shovel snow. I don’t really change batteries or replace anything in our home. I am more than happy to do dishes all day long, pack and unpack things for our trips, plan most every single event that happens in our year, and organize my five-year-old’s life. He is more than happy to go with the flow of what I plan and what I organize for our five year old and he will speak up if he disagrees. He is more than happy to plow our street when it snows for our neighbors and pay annoying bills like car insurance or home insurance for that matter. He keeps track of our stocks (something I find annoying but not as annoying as insurance) and gets really excited when it goes up (which is always cute.) He is a really good big-picture thinker and I tend to get stuck in the little details. He will remind me to think big and not let other people’s negative energy bring me down. I so admire so many traits about him.

In general, though I want to propose that husbands are fabulous. I know everyone’s situation is a little bit different; I am merely suggesting that sometimes when your partner has a trait that is so unlike something you have it may be a really good idea for your relationship to embrace that trait. I used to wonder how we were going to eat the six avocados he bought before they went bad, now I’m just grateful my husband enjoys grocery shopping.

In conclusion, my point is this. We are all different. We can rag on one another for being different or we can choose to embrace our differences and wonder more about why that behavior is meaningful for the other person. We all have the ability to be in positive relationships and recognize how to build each other up.

I remember back in the day I just couldn’t help asking, “Do you really need another charger?” Now I don’t care how many chargers he buys; clearly, it’s working out in my favor.