“MY PERFECT WIFE’S PERFECT HUSBAND”
Giant life-changing news incoming.
Right when we started potty training the two hostages to fate and fortune at the beginning of the month, the better half told me that she got the strange feeling that something was “up” at her job, simply because of the strange ways her closest and close enough colleagues and other people in the sphere of influence were behaving. Though she had no hint of whether it was “good” up or a “bad” up.
Fast forward to the 19th, which was the final Monday before Christmas Day, and this year, a sad half century anniversary I already told you about.
At the salt mines, they gave her a Christmas present that day. It was what looked to be a box the size of a regular sheet of paper, but pretty thin. Gift wrapped with the bow, the whole nine. And it was some exquisite wrapping paper with an exquisite bow, too, so good that it was a shame to have to unwrap it at all. When she bought it home that afternoon, she told me that they wanted her to put it under the tree wherever she would be on Christmas morning, and leave it there until then and not open it up until Christmas morning, scouts’ honor. So I took it to my parents-in-law the next day, and put it under their tree.
But, we knew it had to be something really special, and was also then that we knew that this “up” had to have been a “good” up.
It’s just that none of her speculative options in the six days between getting it and finally opening it turned out to be correct.
I’m going to apologize in advance for this narrative being difficult to read. I have to be really circumspect and opaque, just so that I’m not made.
For awhile, my wife has had two different “hats” to her job. The major way during normal hours, the minor way sorta moonlighting. The major way she does it is that which she has wanted to do since she was a little girl. The minor way is something into which she slowly discovered and evolved, because she and lots of people around her figured out that it was something at which she was good. She’s actually better with the minor hat than the major hat, and she’s good enough at the major hat to make that a profound statement. And she has known for some time, well before she met me, that, eventually, the day would come that the minor hat would become the only hat, and in the process, she would have to quit the major hat. It’s just that she loves doing the major hat so much, it was her childhood dream and passion come true. But, the minor hat which she knew would eventually become the only hat is, like I said, one with which she is much better, and it’s more crucial and critical work, against the background of the stars.
On Christmas Day, that day came.
Inside the bow and the exquisite wrapping paper and bow was a small box, which was itself exquisite and an heirloom, holding inside…
…Promotion paperwork.
A BIG BIG BIG BIG BIG YUGE BIGLY time promotion.
For a job in Frankfurt.
This is the kind of offer you just don’t say no to, you don’t turn down. In spite of it meaning something of a distance move.
Deja vu, because it’s the very same feeling I myself had four and a half years ago. I’ll get to that.
But, the day she knew would come has arrived sooner than she thought.
***
On one level, it’s going to break her heart that she’ll soon no longer be doing her job in the major hat way. Like I said, she loves it that much, it was her childhood calling, and honestly, she’s really good at it. According to herself, her coworkers, her supervisors. She will be missed in that capacity.
On another level, also means that there’s going to be another big change for all of us.
Remember that minor dilemma I had a few months ago? Turns out that fate is going to help me solve it.
We will be looking for and hopefully finding an apartment in or around Frankfurt, and hopefully and specifically Wiesbaden. And that’s where we will be living during a normal sort of business week. That will be fine by me, as you already know, because Wiesbaden suits me like a comfortable glove. I should add that even not counting the giant raise she’s about to get, (once it kicks in, she’ll be making an order of magnitude more money than I), we already have way more than enough income to maintain both it and our current Cologne apartment. Therefore, we’re going to have and maintain both at the same time, because we’ll be back and forth a lot, both together and separately. The drive from Cologne to Wiesbaden is like driving from St. Louis to Columbia, so it’s no big deal. I’ve now done it so often that I could do it blindfolded. In fact, during the Great Summer 2018 Voyage, the very road that most directly connects the Frankfurt region to the Rhine-Ruhr Region, A3, was our first “distance” haul. No way then I could have known that that I’d be seeing and then myself driving that drag many more times.
But I think you know what else this portends. It means some semblance of serious geographical distance between my sons and their beloved Opa, and also vice versa, on a day to day basis, for the first time in their lives. Opa und Oma won’t be that close by anymore, and again vice versa, during typical weekdays.
My father-in-law is a hustler, so he both understands and agrees. No problems from him. After all, it’s his older daughter’s career ambition and ladder climbing, her hustle. And we all couldn’t help but realize the irony that, precisely two years ago to the day that my wife opened up that little box, he himself had another YUGE BIGLY Christmas present of the long term financial benefit sense to his newborn grandsons. Those of you who received my birth notice know what it was. Yet and still, and in spite of his outward stoicism, (what else is new), I know it’s going to sting him to a degree.
OTOH, this is going to be a big and I’m also guessing painful adjustment for those two. Being mindful of the fact that they’re going to be experiencing this in the middle of their already terrible terrible twos and in the middle of potty training (unless potty training gets done by mid-year). But it’s something that was bound to happen, sooner or later. The band-aid eventually had to be ripped. But, hey, it’s not as if they’re not going to see him on most weekends. It might serve as a lesson for them to appreciate Opa und Oma all the more. And it might be just what it takes for them to absorb the lesson of the primacy of their parents, and especially the paternal primacy of their father, even with my “bad cop” role.
Officially, she’ll start when we get back here from St. Louis, which means in August. So, one of the things we’ll have to get done during the first half of this year and before that big trip is finding a place in Wiesbaden (or, if necessary, somewhere else close to Frankfurt, or God forbid in Frankfurt itself), signing the paperwork, getting things set up, furnishing it (keine IKEA, danke). Thankfully, the first half of this year is going to be a relatively easy slog for me when it comes to my own line of work, with only one really one long-ish business trip on the road, February in Berlin.
Speaking of which, in case you’re wondering, then, no, this move won’t hinder my work at all. In fact, it’s going to help me marginally that I’ll have residences in both Cologne and Wiesbaden. As long as I’m physically ten toes down in western Germany in terms of a residence, I’m fine. The only question from a paperwork standpoint is whether we’ll have to change our primary legal residence to Wiesbaden that we’ll be living there during normal business weeks; It will depend on the law. All it would really mean is that my wife votes in Wiesbaden, our drivers’ licenses get changed to our eventual Wiesbaden address, and our cars have license plates that start with WI instead of K.
Hey, now that I think about it, I realize that I’m about to become a Hessian. Insert the relevant chapter from American Revolutionary history here.
***
During the last week, as we’ve been on and off discussing all this, what all this means, the checklist of things we’re going to have to do, and the big changes in general, at one point, she started to say something that translates to, and paraphrased: “I don’t think you know what it’s like to…” And then she stopped herself and corrected herself and said, “But you do.” Squared, maybe cubed.
Full circle.
That’s why we were made for each other.
Remember, everything we wanted cost us everything we knew. Both of us.