Ode to the Wife

"The truth is the hardest thing to explain" -- Squeeze --

I've said some very unpleasant things about my wife in these pages. The feelings expressed were sincere at the time, and strongly felt. But I haven't written about her much when we are getting along well, and it's time to rectify that.

The fool loves me, and I don't always make it easy. I have had anger issues at times. In guy-mode (the only way she knows me), I am not good at expressing my feelings, though I'm markedly better of late. And then, from time to time, I throw the gender issues into the mix, and scare the hell out of her.

She is an outstanding mother. She is essentially a single mother during the week, as I work a shift where I only see the kids on the weekend. This is a great burden for her, but she only complains sporadically. She carts our oldest around to speech and occupational therapies, horseback riding and aquatic therapies, which will eventually bankrupt us. But she will not have her children shortchanged.

On the gender front, I've said before that we had a short experiment when I first revealed my crossdressing to her. I quickly failed the test, because I couldn't control the genie once it was out of the bottle. But during the short grace period, we went shopping together and she bought me a baby blue satin nightshirt. She thought it wasn't too feminine and she could tolerate me wearing it to bed. Even though we shut down the CD experiment, I continued to wear the nightshirt to bed for a couple of years. She really hated it, but didn't say so. Eventually, I figured out how unhappy it made her and stopped wearing it.

She believes that I can express my feminine side through more colorful guy clothes, and her gifts often reflect that. It's frequently stuff I wouldn't have chosen for myself, but these have often become some of my favorite things. So she understands my need to express that part of me, at least on some level. Maybe we can build on that.

A couple of weeks ago, she insisted on buying new facial moisturizer and hand lotion for me, as her sensitive nose was offended by the ones I had purchased. She referred to this as "buying your cosmetics," but without a hint of sarcasm or irony or hostility. Just a fact of life. This may seem small, maybe even to her, but for me this was a glimmer of hope. Maybe there is a middle ground, an understanding to be reached, a compromise to be found.

There have been many times that I haven't liked her, but I stayed because I always loved her. Maybe she can learn to live with Leslie, at least the idea of Leslie, some time soon.