6 Reasons My Husband Will Outlive Me

I’m very lucky to have a husband who is a wonderful father. This is not only good for me, but great for my kids, since he’s most likely going to outlive me. Why, you ask? Well, it’s obvious…

1. He is not the Holder of Things. On any given day, my children give me a vast variety of things to “hold”: half eaten lollipops, tiny toys they’ve won at that bastion of E. Coli known as Chuck E. Cheese, or my daughter’s current obsession: rubber bands she’s found on the sidewalk. This is why despite my over-consumption of vitamin C, I am constantly battling colds. It’s also why my doctor informed me that I was the only patient of hers over the age of 5 to be diagnosed with double pink eye in 2013.

2. He is deaf. I know he really isn’t- but he’s made a good run of this. If a kid yells “mom, dad, can you get me a glass of water?”, and the child’s mother is the one who responds each time he calls ….eventually the kid will only yell for his mother. This means my husband will never go insane from hearing the oh-so-frequent-call of “DAAAD”. I, on the other hand, will be the blue-haired old lady found muttering “”MomMomMomMommyMommyMammaMamaMomMomMOMMY!!!” to myself at the bus stop in about 35 years.

3. He sleeps soundly. This may very well be related to #2. At night, I hear every cough, sigh and fart my kids emit, even though they sleep on another floor of the house. My husband sleeps deeply, knowing that I will be up to handle everything from requests for another blanket to more serious issues, such as the time I woke him up to let him know that I was taking our son to the ER, since he had been screaming bloody murder with jaw pain for 30 minutes. That’s why the phrase should really be “sleeping like a father”, not “sleeping like a baby”

4. I am the first-listed emergency contact for school. This means I get all the calls from school- which range from “are you children bus or pickup today?” to the dreaded “This is the school nurse….”, or “I need to speak to you about your son at recess today.” When that number pops up on my cell phone, I get heart palpitations and feel the need to seek medical attention.

5. He totally outmaneuvered me when we divvied up kid duties. How I ended up with the dreaded triple boobie prize of sunscreen-applier, nail clipper-wielder and thank you note-supervisor, I will never know. The amount of tears these three tasks have generated could fill a reservoir. And the kids don’t like them either.

6. He realizes that the kids have opposable thumbs and are tall enough to reach the majority of counters in our home. He knows they can make themselves a sandwich if they are hungry, that eventually they will brush their teeth, and that they can wait five minutes for you to come help them find the batteries for the remote. This is diametrically opposite to my tendency to plan and supervise their lives. It’s this talent that I most envy in my husband, the one I most need to learn to emulate. If I do that, I just might live long enough to be that crazy old lady at the bus stop.