A real man isn’t afraid of a woman with a voice

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a dude out there who has organized a conference to instruct women on all things feminine. And by feminine, he means at home, pregnant, while simultaneously thin and gorgeous and cooking gourmet meals and keeping a spotless house.

Apparently, he also hosts a men’s conference where men learn to grunt and snort and crush cans on their foreheads. (I don’t actually know that for sure, since I didn’t waste my time looking up the men’s conference, but that’s how I imagine it.)

As it happens, my husband and I have fairly traditional gender roles. For the last several years I haven’t worked, and when I did, it was part-time. I do the majority of the cooking, grocery shopping, and laundry.

We sort of stumbled into this arrangement. I’d never planned to be a stay-at-home mom, and he never planned on being the sole source of income for our family.

But we had a sick child, and then I got sick, and you know, life happened and here we are.

Which makes me wonder, where does the stuff of life fit into this guy’s ideal?

I mean, okay… if everyone is healthy and life is putzing along smoothly enough, whatever. If she likes baking homemade bread in high heels and he likes working as a lumberjack (or at least looking like one), then by all means. Who am I to judge?

But what happens when, say, the guy gets injured and can no longer swing an axe? (Or a pulaski, as does my husband.)

Or a child gets sick? (In our case, chronic ear infections and asthma… We thank our lucky stars that our son’s health struggles were relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.)

Or suddenly mom’s long hair starts falling out? (Didn’t you know? Only lesbians have short hair.)

What if her brain feels like it’s outgrowing her skull and she can’t even make it up and down the stairs with a laundry basket, much less in high heels?

What happens then?

You can be the manliest manly all-American man’s man – you can enjoy sleeping in the dirt under the stars and literally walk into fire for a living – but if your wife is screaming in pain in the emergency room and your five-year-old son is sitting in a chair next to you with his feet poking straight out, staring in horror as they poke needles into his mother’s arm, wondering if she’s going to die, you are terrified.

You might even cry. (Later, when no one is looking, because some dude several thousand years ago held a conference that taught men they weren’t supposed to do that, even when your whole life seems to be shattering right before your eyes).

Now, I am nothing if not inventive.

I like big ideas, and I like looking for holes in the market.

Here’s what I see… I see lots of conferences for women led by women, on every topic from leadership, to religion, to quilting, to rocket science.

There are lots of men’s conferences led by men as well. And now, we have a conference for women led exclusively by men.

What we don’t have, that I’m aware of, is a conference for men led exclusively by women.

So I think I’ll go ahead and put that together.

My conference will cover subjects like How To Sort Lights and Darks and What To Say If She Asks You If She Looks Fat.

Because obviously, these are the only sort of topics that matter to men and women – these rudimentary, shallow guidelines of behavior that outline how to make life go smoothly when life is already going smoothly. Or not…

Here is what my manliest manly all-American man’s man and I have learned in our decade-long relationship:

No matter how many plans you make, expectations you set, or rules you place for yourself and others, life is going to break them all. Life doesn’t care if you want it to go one specific way or another. It doesn’t care if you’re scared or uncertain or uncomfortable. Life doesn’t follow your rules.

Life is just life. Ever shifting, ever unpredictable, ever evolving.

You can try to put people into tidy boxes – men go here, women go there, boys go here, girls go there – but they won’t stay put. We never have, and we never will.

It has nothing to do with gender. It has to do with the terrifying, gorgeous uncertainty of life.

My husband didn’t plan on his wife getting sick when he married me. But I did, and I am. He does the vacuuming, and together he and our sons mop the floors, even though I am home all day.

Why? Because it hurts me to do certain chores, and because he’s a good human, and we are raising good humans.

My husband carries a 35 lb. pack and a pulaski into the burning wilderness for a living. He doesn’t need some dude dressed as a lumberjack to tell him how to be a man.

(Incidentally, my husband has also been known to dig a fire line around a nest of baby rabbits.)

My husband doesn’t want this lumberjack dude anywhere near his wife. Because his wife is intelligent, and capable, and has big ideas, and she’s finally healthy enough to get back out there and live.

(I also happen to make a mean homemade macaroni and cheese and the best mashed potatoes he’s ever had.)

My husband knows if I decided to unleash my powers on this lumberjack dude I would chew him up and spit him out.

My husband does not feel protective of me because I’m his frail little woman.

He feels protective of me because I am his person, because we’ve fought the good fight together, because we are in this together.

My husband and I don’t need some stranger in a flannel shirt telling us how to live our best life. In our experience, life is a far better teacher.

Copyright © 2020 Sara Beth Wald