The love letters.
One of the many times I got in trouble with Kristi was a few years into our marriage. When we dated in high school - she was at Erwin and I was at Huffman - back before the days of text messages and emails, she would hand-write me love letters while at school or at home and then give them to me when she saw me on Wednesday night or Sunday morning at church, or if came over to her house to visit, or on a date. They were just things she had been thinking about or things that happened at school that she wanted to tell me about, plus other things, like how she felt about me and all of that mushy stuff. I enjoyed getting them, reading them, and being able to get into the mind of Kristi. Another thing I enjoyed was drafting and CAD (computer-aided drafting) at school, which is what I still do to this day. In that type of job, as I've explained before, someone draws or details something with dimensions, notes and sketches and then it gets checked by a checker, usually with a red pen. They have to be exact with the measurements and call-outs on the drawing or things can get messed up quick in the field, or jobsite, and be very expensive to fix. There is no room for mistakes. Don't get ahead of me, although you probably know where this is going.
I'm a packrat to an extent. Some things I trash immediately if I feel it is useless to me. But other things, sentimental things, I hang on to and it gets to be a clutter, but now, I'm glad I held on to so many things that were hers and sentimental to me over the last 30+ years. They are tangible and not just a memory, but they also spark memories and can bring a smile to my RDF - resting depressed face. She was the same way. She had moments where she had to purge stuff that was no longer of use to her but other things, she held on to, like cards, notes and journals. We each had our own place we kept these things that meant something to us.
So as I said at the beginning, a few years into our marriage I got in trouble. She was in clean-out mode and came across my box of sentimental items from high school. They weren't private so it was fine if either of us wanted to look at things. What she found in there wasn't a letter from another girl that I kept. It wasn't a break-up letter that I never gave her. It was her letters... to me... that I "marked up"... with a red pen - you know, like we did in drafting class when checking drawings. Yeah, I fixed grammar, spelling mistakes, run-on sentences, etc. I just have the natural ability to proof-read things quickly and I see mistakes that most people just read past. Those memes that say, "can you read this?" and every word has the letters all jumbled but the human brain can still read it as if it is correctly spelled - yeah I hate those things. So I come home from work and she's sitting in the floor, looking very sad, with those letters opened and in front of her. I saw the red corrections and thought, "She will find this a little funny, right? She knew what she was getting with me. I always pointed out mistakes in newspapers, magazines and on TV commercials. SHE KNEW!"
It wasn't a good night. What I did made her feel dumb. I corrected her love to me. It wasn't an over-reaction by her. I messed up and I knew it. I knew it when I was doing it. "If she ever finds these..." yeah. Nothing I said that night made it better. Why would it? She was right. Over the years, the disappointment in that lessened, and she forgave me quicker than I thought she would, as was her way, and she even told this story on occassion, usually to young married couples as a "what not to do" lesson in staying happily married. Needless to say, I no longer have those letters she wrote. She threw them away that night and I don't blame her. It's one of those moments in my life that if I could go back and erase what I did, I would. I never wanted to make her feel dumb or less than. I have several "I wish I had not..." moments, not just with her but with many things, but I learned from each one of them. That one incident taught me that marriage is a team effort, on equal ground, one not superior to the other and to treat her with the same love and respect that I desired from her. I don't have the right to grade her, mark her up, or tear her down. She still loved me after that. Again, I was the luckiest man on earth to have her as my wife.
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