Pretty Little Trees and Happy Accidents

There are those who think my blogs come too much at the expense of my darling husband.  In fact, I allow him veto rights before the blog hits the fan.  All writers are encouraged to write what they know.  For more than thirty years, I have been a faithful observer of this gentle giant.  I would venture to say that even his mother does not know the subtleties, the quirks, and the hilarious ironies that define this man as well as I do.  Of my several core competencies, I am the undisputed expert on this man.  To his minions, he is a solid and serious academic who defers to statistical significance.  To me, he is a loving and clueless professor who pretends to be house broken, hoping that a critical oversight won’t give him away.

The quirks are many.  I suppose the success of my marriage is that fact that I find most of them endearing.  Even the kids have grown to mock these “unique” features.  For example, my husband has many aphorisms. Faced with a complex interrogation, most men would become defensive.  Mine, however, sits quietly and listens.  At the end, he offers, “Yes, is the simple answer.”  When he is juggling mental calculations or sorting through conceptual ideas, he fills the silence with, “Bear with me!”  He is also an incurable creature of habit.  In the car, he sets the GPS even when he is going home.

Among his likes and dislikes, quirks and habits, my husband has one dirty little secret.  He is a closet Bob Ross aficionado.  Tucked away in our basement, in corners and boxes he believes are yet undiscovered, he has every single Bob Ross episode on DVD.   Even after decades of watching these again and again, my darling mate never tires of watching as a blank canvas—treated first, of course, with Liquid White—explodes into a snow-capped mountain or a densely foliaged river bank.  He blinks in disbelief as the tapping of a brush into Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Blue transforms nothingness into trees of some uncertain variety.  He is awed by the press of the palate knife and its ability to turn spring into winter, or to reveal the shadows of distant evergreens.

But his wonderment is short lived.  No sooner does the landscape begin to reveal itself that hubby drifts off into deep REM sleep.  Try though he might, the poor boy has never made it to the end of a single episode.  The husky voice of the Afro-coiffed painter is the antidote to a rough day, the answer to how to spend a rainy Saturday, or the method of choice for skirting the honey-do list.  It is his personal brand of crack—the Kryptonite to this Superman.  It not only brings him to his knees, it renders him unconscious and flat on his back.

I suppose, as guilty pleasures go, I can give him this one.  He is a hardworking man, admired by many but truly understood by only a few.  He lives every moment of his life in a fast paced and competitive environment.  Such a man deserves a place where he can go to unwind.  I don’t begrudge his escape to a painterly world with happy little trees.

Tomorrow's blog:  The Thrill and The Agony