What more could we ask?
Iwonder if any of you ladies remember author Marabel Morgan, whose first book The Total Woman hit the stands as a way to help woman become better wives.
She was an anti-feminist who pretty much figured that once a woman married she was to cater to her husband above all others. All I remember about the book (yes, I read it, not to get advice, but out of curiosity) was the part on how to keep your man interested in you. She suggested doing various things, but the one that sticks out in my mind was that you should greet your husband at the door wearing nothing but Saran Wrap when he came home from work.
I gotta tell ya, I thought that was the most hysterical suggestion I’d ever read. I remember thinking, “What’s the point of this?” And how many tubes of that stuff would you need? Back then, I weighed maybe 100 pounds soaking wet, but the “little woman” was supposed to wrap her whole self in this stuff. I thought about the James Bond movie Goldfinger, where a girl was killed by painting her with gold paint. It suffocated her.
The last thing I wanted to do was suffocate myself with a clear plastic wrap. Besides, how truly ridiculous is this? What woman in her right mind would even attempt to do this? If I had even succeeded in this and met Bill at the door, he more than likely would say something beginning with a curse word and we’d both laugh hysterically. If you have to wrap yourself in some clear plastic stuff to interest your husband, you have probably married the wrong person. No matter, the book was wildly popular for a time and started good conversations that usually ended up with my friends making hilarious comments that were not fit for anti- feminists’ ears.
Was I a feminist? Well, let’s just say I was more a feminist than not. Still am, but I don’t like labels. I’m still pretty much a free-thinking woman who has never been subservient to anyone let alone my husband. He’d think I was nuts. I remember years ago Bill would ask me if I minded him going somewhere or doing something. My thoughts were, and I expressed them, “I am not your mother. You don’t need my permission for that.”
That’s not to say that we didn’t respect each other and never just went somewhere without telling the other. That’s just being thoughtful. In our early years before the iPhone, Bill had some classes at Berry College. He had a study group and they’d get together on some evenings, but he was usually home by seven or so.
One evening when it got to be nine, I started to worry. By ten, I was beginning to go into a nervous snit! I called my sister-in-law, Mollie, and she came and got me. We drove all over the backroads coming from Rome to Calhoun. I figured he was hidden in a ditch somewhere or crushed into a tree. We didn’t find him. When we got back to our apartment, he came out the door asking where the heck I was. Okay, he didn’t say “heck.” He thought I may have been kidnapped!
I think Mollie started laughing and before too long we were all laughing hysterically on the living room floor. Bill and I have huge imaginations and they had kicked in big time. Our life together has brought many hysterical moments in the almost 52 years we’ve been together.
Bill is an interesting man, but sometimes, just like me, he doesn’t think things through. Every spring and fall, he would get a notion to burn brush and things. It made me uneasy, but no matter. He didn’t need my permission to burn. One time, a fire got a wee bit away from him and he set a huge pine tree a blaze.
Somehow or another, he managed to get it out. I was coming back from the store with the kids and he met us in the driveway. I took one look at his face and his eyebrows were singed. I didn’t ask. Another time, he was going to only burn just a bit in the back of our property. It got away from him and he totally destroyed our kids’ and friends’ tree house and village. It had been a glorious little creation they had worked on for years.
To this day even though the children are almost all over 40, they have never forgiven him for doing that. I have never had to wrap myself in plastic wrap or anything else to keep him interested in me. And, gracious good golly, he’s made my life interesting.
What more could either of us ask after 51-plus years.
Coleen Brooks is a longtime resident of Gordon County who previously wrote for the Calhoun Times as a columnist. She retired as the director and lead instructor for the
Georgia Northwestern Technical College Adult Education Department in 2013. She can be reached at coleenbrooks1947@
gmail.com.