John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Impressing My Wife

She was with me this morning in the car during several important calls when we went out to get coffee. I think that impressed her but then I dropped her off at the hotel and stayed in the car to work since I didn’t want to wake up the kids. I went back to the room an hour later to let her know there had been several more calls –and even more calls to come after that.

Granted these “calls” don’t involve manual labor or any kind of real physical work, but I want my wife to imagine my conference calls are the equivalent –or harder — than draining physical labor.

I just texted her again to tell her about some emails I am having to respond to and how stressful my morning has been but how I won’t allow any of this to impact our vacation plans today. I hope this will underline for her –and our children — all the sacrifice I make for them and how “I work so hard to support our family.” They love hearing me say that. Not really. But I love saying it. A lot, as a matter of fact.

Rebecca texted back her standard response that she appreciates all I do. And this time even included a smiley face. Which I apprecited.

The text has a picture of Rebecca’s healthy face but is a washed-out or white generic emoji to emphasize how drained I must feel.

I thought about texting Rebecca that I might be having some mild chest pains right now to emphasize for her how hard I am working and hopefully get more than a smiley face on her next text back. But since I am not having chest pains and am actually in a well air conditioned Starbucks enjoying coffee while doing my laborious “emails,” I am not going to do that right now.

But I am going to post on Facebook about how hard I am working this morning and how much I do for our family and tag her.

And then text her and ask her to have to kids read my Facebook post about how hard my day has been so far — and how I hope they appreciate it.

I am not asking them to praise me or tell me how grateful they are for me and all I do or to maybe tell me that I am a totally amazing husband and father. Although any of those things would be nice. All I am really asking is that they at least acknowledge my efforts in some small but significant way. Just “liking” this post would let me know my message is getting through loud and clear. Or at least vaguely and inadequately. Which is enough for my over-sized and needy male ego this morning.