But now he cooks several evenings a week, handles his own laundry, and takes responsibility for cleaning and shopping.
We still have disagreements. Thirty-eight years of habits don’t disappear overnight.
But he hasn’t called me useless again.
Last Sunday, our children came for dinner.
When Emily complimented the meal, Robert said something I’d never heard him say before.
“Your mother spent decades making this home comfortable for all of us. I should have thanked her a long time ago.”
I looked down at my plate because my eyes were filling with tears.
Later, while washing the dishes together, he turned to me.
“Margaret, I’m sorry it took me thirty days to understand what you tried to tell me for twenty years.”
I answered quietly.
“It wasn’t thirty days, Robert. It was twenty years.”
He didn’t argue.
And perhaps that was the biggest change of all.
