The Mighty Viking

This Sunday morning began, as do many of the weekend mornings around here – slowly, with my wife and I bringing online our various faculties – awareness of our children‘s status and location, the reason for the Odd Gait on the way to the bathroom, the most appropriate contortion required to correct said Odd Gait, and creating the illusion of presentable appearance. The latter generally comes in stages, as we come to grips with the level required. On a Sunday, “Functional and decently enrobed in Fuzzy Things and comical T-shirts” is the norm. “Functional” generally means glasses, coffee, and something to keep the hair out of our eyes.

From my entry to the Submarine Service in 1983 until a few years ago, I had maintained short hair, but a few years ago I woke up on my normal haircut day wondering to myself, “Why am I going for a haircut? I don‘t even like haircuts”. And so, on that brisk December morning 5 years ago, I stopped. It has created endless mirth and/or derision with the kids and wife, but it‘s my hair, and it‘s length is my choice. My wife threatens to cut my hair in my sleep sometimes. I threaten to beat up her relatives with the jawbone of an ass. And thus!the hair grows.

This morning I had the early morning duty, and so was well ahead of her in the process of coming to grips with Sunday. Fuzzy things: check. Comical shirt: check. Coffee: double-check. Hair-thingy: check. And I was well on my way to my Sunday morning station, waffle-making in the kitchen.

This week was Strawberry Waffle week, and so I headed to the basement freezer to retrieve a bag of berry sweetness. Alas, I found the stack of ruined food in a bucket, barring the opening of the freezer door. My wife told me about this bucket two days ago, and asked me to take out to the trash. Seems one of the kids had raided the basement, and left the freezer door open long enough to created a frost-laden tomb for most of our stores as the freezer had valiantly tried in vain to freeze an extra 1200 square feet of space, and a path to melted freedom for that which rolled out of the freezer during the invasion, which then marched on in the great circle of life to “rotted food” status.

I shoved the offending bucket aside with a fuzzy-cloaked foot, and came up against the Tomb of Ice. Fortunately for me, right next to the freezer is an area I use for working, and a crowbar happened to be sitting there. I snatched up the tool with biblical flare, and applied what turned out to be the only appropriate tool for the Philistonian strawberry freezer bag. The usual butter-knife-as-a-lever approach would have never worked, the strength of the foe was too great. As it was, my hands spent long enough inside the freezer to go nearly numb – completely numb on the right side. When the top bag sprang free of its frozen bonds and bounced its brick-like weight onto my foot I was so proud of myself. I started back up the stairs with crowbar and strawberries in hand, and the bucket of rotting food went quietly back to forlorn decomposition.

It was in this state that I first met my wife for the morning. She had gotten as far as the coffee pot, but no further. She took one glance at her battle-weary husband ascending from the basement with the crowbar gripped victoriously in his left hand, and her eyebrows shot up in a way incongruent with her level of awareness. The poetic “first waft of coffee in the morning” moment made ubiquitous by endless coffee commercials!they never show these moments. These are the harsh reality – that wisdom is truly bought by moments when your shocked and overwhelming response is slowed by a mouthful of hot coffee, and the physical restraint required to contain that coffee gives you an aire of wisdom and tolerance.

There was one other area that I was ahead of her on this lazy Sunday morning. My hair was safely out of the way, held by my own, non-glittery plain brown hair-thingy. She realized this as I walked past her to put the crowbar on the counter, and the frozen berries in the microwave. As the microwave set busily to warming the berries, I sauntered into the living room, and she apparently launched a covert attack, tracking down and grasping to steal the hair-thingy from the back of my head. By all accounts, her pre-caffeinated state caused three misses before she finally grasped the swinging ponytail.

At this point, caught totally unaware, all my submarine training came to bear fully on the attack at hand. I wheeled around to pull my hair from her grasp, and simultaneously pulled her close by circling my right arm behind her. The sudden movement floated her fuzzy things just enough that my hand slipped under the comical t-shirt and met her bare back. This was, you may recall, the hand that spent the most time in the freezer just moments ago, and was still numb.

Her reaction to my hand caused the hair-thingy she had managed to slide off my hair to become immediately available for my retrieval. Also available was the munition of a non-verbal acoustic assault that defied several laws of physics, and made me blink. But I held tight, basking in the sudden warmth my numb hand felt, and the unexpected intimacy of we two, in our fuzzy things and comical t-shirts. The desperate panic of a moment ago was punctuated with an intensely quiet, focused moment between us, and our lips clung to each other until the cold in her back sent her kidneys into cryogenic stasis. And then, looking deeply into each other‘s eyes, we watched!to see which of us would flinch first!which would make the dive for the hair-thingy lying on the floor four feet from us.

Her eyes darted first, and I let her go. It has long been an accepted fact in our relationship that she is quicker than I. I never really had a chance. I threatened her relatives, but she pointed out that the ascribed Ass‘s jawbone was already flailing the air in a futile soliloquy, and the matter was dropped in uncontrolled mirth. She had her hair-thingy. She had her strawberries. And, she had the last laugh.

And I? I had a tub of decomposing food in the basement, a free-flowing mane of hair, a warm hand,

!And a coffee-flavored kiss from a queen wearing fuzzy things and a comical t-shirt.

I win.