Patience

Patience wasn’t always his strong point. In fact, you could say patience was as far from his strong point as ice is from the Sahara.

So what happened?

There are only two things that can really influence blokes; food and women. In this case, it was a woman. But it’s not quite what you might think. Let me share with you his story.

It’s not that he had to wait years and years for this woman to finally agree to marry him. She was already his beautiful and loving wife.

It’s not that he had to wait for her to agree to any of his brilliant ideas. They had quite a healthy relationship, discussing al of their decisions together and they were quite open about everything.

It’s not even that he had to wait a long time for dinner to be ready. In fact he took longer to make dinner for her than she did for him.

It was just that there was one little niggly little habit of hers. You see, she loved shopping.

Endless hours were spent sifting through tiny little gift and clothes shops in obscure corners of town and striding down the cavernous throats of shiny shopping malls. She didn’t buy much but just seemed to love the experience of looking, touching, trying and yes, on the odd occasion, buying.

His feet were sore. There was stuff to do at home, but because he loved spending “quality time” with her, he kept going. Besides, there were doughnuts.

Week after week it went on. Month after month. He really wasn’t enjoying any of it and it started getting a bit much. Each time they went out the bitter, pointless sensation became stronger and stronger until one day he had had enough.

“I’ve had enough.” He said. “This is ridiculous. Why do we need to keep coming to these shops every week, wandering around and doing nothing worthwhile? It’s pointless. My feet hurt and I have more important things to do at home.”

“Sweetheart.” said his wife. “I know there’s things to do and I’m sorry about your feet.” She thought for a second and continued, “Let me show you something.” And with that she took her husband by the hand, lead him back to the car and drove the two out of the car park, down the street and all the way home.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

“Just wait”

When they pulled in to the driveway, she quickly got out and was around at his side before he could even open the door. He glanced at her through the window and couldn’t help but notice how beautiful her smile was. She always looked pretty, but he seemed to notice it even more when she was hiding something from him. This was certainly no exception. He had no clue what was going on.

She opened his door, grabbed his hand again and, hardly waiting for him to get his feet out of the car, towed him through the front door, down the hall and into their living room. At that point she turned around, looked at him with her gorgeous, knowing smile and simply held out her arms.

“You … want a hug?”

“No, dummy” Her arms dropped back to her side but the smile stayed. “Look around.”

He loved their house. It was just a rental, but it was so pretty. So cozy and homelike. There were nice pictures hanging, candles lined up along a humble but beautiful sideboard. A cute little red rug under an equally cute, teak coffee table. There wasn’t much but she’d done it so well. Hang on … SHE’d done it so well.

Bang! It hit him like a sledgehammer on a teacup. If he were left to make the house a home, it would most certainly still be a house. Probably even have a few bottles and questionable items of food hanging around. That’s what he used to have before he met her, wasn’t it.

He found his eyes, now accustomed to his newly found revelation, drifting back to his wife. He’d seen it before but now it started to make sense. She was a work of art. Her body was her canvas. So was the house, and … He looked down at his shirt. Didn’t really take any notice what he threw on this morning, but saw now that even it looked pretty nice. It was that shirt she bought him just the other week. Even he was her canvas.

‘My wife is an artist.’ He thought as he stood there with one of those dopey expressions on his face.

“I like that” he accidentally said aloud.

“What?”

Blink.

“Oh, um … I just realised …” he trailed off. “Sorry, just thinking out loud.”

“Thinking what?”

You know that point when a bloke just starts staring. You can tell that the gears are spinning in there somewhere but not much else is happening.

Blink     blink    Ding!

“Sorry. I’m so sorry. I realise now. This shopping thing,” He took a moment to smile and try to look intelligent. “Its research, right.”

Dumbfounded, she looked at him for a second, not long, but enough time to make a quick decision.

“Yep. Yes, that’s exactly what it is.”

‘Research! He must be joking, but look, he’s got that face on. He’s trying to look like he knows what he’s talking about. How funny.’ she thought.

‘That’s fine. That’ll work. He can think that.’

Saturday came around again and after a week of being away from each other at work, he was ready to spend some quality time with his beautiful and resourceful wife.

He sat down on a slightly comfortable, aluminum bench as she slipped into a particularly arty looking clothes shop. As he watched her go, the proud husband nodded his head knowingly and said quietly to himself,

“Research. Brilliant!”

He then settled in for the wait, smiled and took a big bite of his doughnut.