Rough Draft Wife

Over the weekend, a friend (a very fine, a very smart, and a very sexy....well..you get the point...an XY friend)...asked me the following question:

"What makes you a good wife?"

He wasn't talking about the GENERAL "you"...he meant ME...as in specifically Mocha.

I sat there dumbfounded and stunned for about 20 minutes, not knowing how to answer him.

You see...after my divorce, I've done nothing but concentrate on my failures as a wife. It is hard to see the forests for the trees. When it all seems bleak, you rarely see the good. I feel I was, in essence, a rough draft wife. A good starter wife for a first marriage. But I didn't get a chance to be proofread or fine tuned....turned into a manuscript worthy of publication.

If you had to ask my ex, the WASband, what made me a good wife, his answer would be bleak:

"You ran and managed an organized house. Cooking was a bonus"

In other words, I was a glorified maid....the help. (Or worse...maybe an unpaid maid at that.) There would be no mention of me balancing it all solo for a while. Or that whatever his dream was, as long as he had one, for himself and our family, I would have been down for that. "Just pick one!" is what I would scream. I know I said marriage causes amnesia but perhaps divorce does too. We forget the good and remember the bad.

I, on the other hand, remember the good as well as the bad. He was funny and a great son-in-law. He loved children and education. He wasn't handy but he tried. There was more laughter than tears, trust me.

But back to me...

To answer my friend's questions, I had to look deeper. I prefaced my answer by saying I wasn't sure how good a wife I was given I had failed. He quickly retorted "just because you failed at marriage doesn't make you a bad wife or that you don't have great qualities. That marriage wasn't meant to last. It failed for a reason: to prepare you for something better. "

He had a point.

I took a deep sigh and responded. I said that although I was a great cook and knew how to keep a home,  I was also fun, spontaneous and kind. I put God at the center of my life and despite having meager finances, I could be thrifty and provide. I kept myself looking good and something to be proud to have on his arm.  And although he may have not done the same for me, I respected my husband enough to come in at a decent time if was out. I left work problems at work and let family time be ours.. I'm culturally sound and family oriented. I agreed with him that my first marriage taught me a lot about myself : you can't live off love and you must have a plan and desire for your family. I learned that I'm a Proverbs 31 woman through and through but I'm a work in progress. I'm a rough draft.



I said all this and my friend, feeling his smile through he phone said :

"Those are the kinds of things I like to hear from a woman I am falling for"

So perhaps I won't be a rough draft for the rest of my life. Or be stuck in some editor's slush pile of love.

New writers
Create new chapters
The tale unfolds...
Ink and proofs and more ink
Until you've created a masterpiece .
The great American love story .


Yes...I'm ok with being a rough draft. I'm just a novel in the making. :)