Equality is one of the most important factors in a successful marriage.  It is the difference between “You and I” and “We,” and is the foundation for mutual respect, supportive decision-making, and shared responsibility.  It ensures both partners feel valued; it fosters emotional intimacy; it promotes fairness in labor, reinforces individual growth, and enhances overall wellbeing.  It does make it harder to select a restaurant for dinner takeout, but that is a small price to pay for all of the good that comes from marital equality.

Equality is especially important in my own marriage because my husband and I are both oldest children and, uh, we gotta lotta captains in our house.  Lotttttta captains.  No crew.  Kyle and I stand together at the hem, our faces pointed confidently towards the horizon, the feathers in our hats waving grandly in the wind, and each of our hands white-knuckle gripped on the wheel.  Our method of balance when making shared decisions is that one person makes the decision and the other person hates it but takes his or her hand off the proverbial wheel juuust long enough to keep the boat from going in circles forever, and then we swap places for the next decision and repeat. 

Our whole thing is best summed up (with a couple of liberties by yours truly) by the character Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring:

“Our quest towards equality stands upon the edge of a knife.  Stray but a little and it will fail to the ruin of all.  Yet hope remains while all the Company is true…and so long as one of us doesn’t drive into the garage door.”

Sooooooo, guess what, I recently drove into the garage door.

It was a weekday morning, and I was responsible for carpooling my own children and our neighbor’s child to school and getting myself to work.  As my older son gets further and further into puberty it takes him longer and longer to get ready for things, and my younger son was especially worked up that morning that he would be late due to his brother’s dalliances.

“We have to go!  We have to go!”  Ten insisted, shutting the car door.  “We have to go!”

“Okay, buddy, we’re going!”  I said.  “Fourteen will be ready any minute.”

Fourteen appeared at the door into the garage.

“Where are my socks?”  He called into the garage.  “They were on the kitchen table!”  (As an aside: Why were the socks on the table amongst the food? Unknown.)

“I’m wearing your socks!”  Ten opened the car window and shouted.

“MOM!”  Fourteen yelled.

“Get in the car, please!” I called back, pressing the garage door opener on my visor.

 Fourteen stomped into the garage and got into the car (wearing socks and shoes, I might add).

“You have lots of socks!”  Ten yelled.

“You have lots of socks, too!”  Fourteen yelled.

“Yes, but I needed socks because I’m going to be late!”  Ten yelled.  “WE HAVE TO GO!”

“I’m going!” I said, exasperatedly, putting the car in reverse and backing up.

There was a loud crunch and everyone stopped yelling.

“Uh oh,” Fourteen said.

Kyle appeared at the door into the garage.

“Everyone okay?”  He called out to us.  I rolled down the window of my car.

“Yes,” I said.

Kyle contemplated his words.

“Was that sound the garage door?”  He asked.

I also contemplated my response.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “But I’d better get the boys to school.”

“Yes,” Kyle said.

I dropped the boys off – on time, I might add – and called Kyle on my way to work.

“Did I hit the garage door?”  I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“That’s okay!”  He said.  “I will try and fix it.”

Later that night, I got home from work and called Kyle from the driveway.

“Can I park in the garage?”  I asked.

“Yes,” he said.  “I think I fixed it for a little bit, but we may need to have someone come and look at it.”

“I’m sure you did a great job because you are smart and handsome,” I said, tipping my symbolic captain’s hat to him.  I pressed the button and the garage door opened.  I drove in and pressed the button again and the garage door closed.  “And you obviously fixed it because it’s perfect.”

“It’s not perfect,” he said.  “But it will hold until we can get someone from the garage door fix-it place to check it out.”

“I will call them tomorrow,” I said.

Fast-forward two weeks.  I hadn’t called the garage door fix-it place because the garage door continued to be perfect and also I forgot.  For his part, Kyle didn’t ask about it because of the trust and mutual respect thing I mentioned, and also because he had an electrician coming to the house to take care of an unrelated (for real) issue in the garage.  I was washing dishes after dinner while Kyle and Fourteen packed up and left for hockey.  As the garage door closed behind them, I heard “CLUNK CLUNK BOOM” from somewhere in the house that may or may not have been in the direction of the garage.

“Was that you?”  I shouted down to Ten, who was watching a movie with the sound at a billion decibels down in the basement.

“Probably,” Ten shouted up.  I decided not to investigate further.

Two hours later, Kyle and Fourteen returned from hockey.  Fourteen found me upstairs minding my own business.

“The garage door won’t open!” he said.  “The cables snapped and fell down.”

“That’s weird,” I said.

“Not really,” Fourteen said.  “Remember when you hit the garage door?”

“No, I don’t think that was me,” I said.

I put Ten to bed, folded laundry, and did a lot of time wasting before I decided to face the music garage door.  I went downstairs where Kyle was lying on the couch watching TV.  I sat down next to him.

“Did you have a good evening?”  He asked, casually, without looking at me.

“Yes, I did,” I said without looking at him.  “How was hockey?”

“Good,” he said.  “The boys were working hard.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

“I’m going to have to drive you to work tomorrow,” he said, still casually, still not looking at me.  “The garage door won’t open.”

“Oh, dear,” I said.  “Too cold outside?”

“Nooo, I don’t think it was that,” he said.  “The cables broke.”

“That’s weird,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I’ll call the fix-it people tomorrow.”

“Thanks for doing that,” I said.

The garage door got fixed.  Our repair company was an awesome husband-and-wife team who also found and fixed a few non-essential items on the door, making it work more smoothly and look nicer than before.

“I guess the garage door is in better shape now than it was before I hit it,” I said to Kyle as I pressed the button and watched it go up.

“Yes, I guess so,” Kyle said.

“You’re welcome,” I said, turning the ship’s wheel back to center once again.

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The photo above is of our two captains.

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This week on North Dakota Today, we talked about Crosby’s Taleah Zaugg, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as a new group for chess enthusiasts in Grand Forks. (Valley News Live)

Here’s one of the intro paragraphs of my recent column on the Grand Forks Herald: “For my husband, Kyle, however, the above-freezing temperatures were anything but welcome. Day after day after day, he stood at the kitchen window, beads of sweat dripping from both his forehead and the window, staring at the backyard in wintery lament. Because Kyle has an outdoor rink, and that outdoor rink was melting.” (Grand Forks Herald)

I had a guest author this week, Esther Donohue, who wrote about homesteading in North Dakota.  Check it out. (North Dakota Nice)

This is such a nice story I don’t feel like I will do it justice in summarizing it.  Take 2 minutes and read it. (KFYR TV)

In North Dakota-adjacent news, every gold medal men’s hockey Olympic team across history has included a player from Warroad, Minnesota. (Facebook)

Bismarck’s Kathleen Boyle Wrigley has written a children’s book in honor of her brother’s “kindness patrol.” (KFYR TV)

Josh Duhamel is premiering his new movie at the Fargo Film Festival. (Valley News Live)

 

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