Transmogrifier

Marriage can sure change a relationship, eh?

I started this conversation with my wife this evening over dinner.  Dinner consisted of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and two summer sausage sandwiches.  If you want REALLY GOOD summer sausage, go find someone who lives in Kitchener-Waterloo.  Ask them to go to the Brubaker Mennonite farm just about fifteen minutes outside of town.  Their daughter will answer the door with dirty bare feet and a friendly smile.  Tell her you're there to buy a stick of summer sausage.  If you're observant, there are probably a number of them hanging right there inside the front porch, just past the daughter holding the screen door open for you.  They weigh about a kilo each and will cost you between fifteen and twenty dollars, depending on exact weight.  The meat is well-aged and is stuffed inside canvas tubing.  Cash only.

Now get this someone, whomever bought the meat for you, to send it to you in Edmonton.  If that's where you live.  Ask them to wrap it several times in saran wrap.  Then add a couple layers of aluminium foil.  A stick fits nicely at the bottom of a plastic shopping bag.  Get your special someone to roll it in several of those too.  Now package it appropriately for the mail.  Canada Post will have it at your doorstep just a few days later.  You'll probably still be able to smell it coming.  It'll keep in your fridge for months.  There is no finer processed meat than Mennonite summer sausage.

So as I was slurping my soup and reveling in my sausage (summer, that is), I asked my wife if she too thought that things had changed a fair bit since we got married.  She made a rather noncommittal reply requesting clarification.

Well, think about it.  Just two years ago we were unmarried, living in a basement suite, I was working full time in northern Alberta (making a little more money) and we were planning our lives together.  NOW, we have a house, are married, have enjoyed our honeymoon, I'm working full time back in town and we're sporting a seven month old son who has yet to make any non-viscous contributions to the home.  When, in the past year or so, have we taken the opportunity to re-evaluate - or just to re-establish - the relationship that exists between the two of us?  (One could make the argument, "When have we had the time?")

So much of our energy now gets directed towards maintaining a home and rearing the most adorable son ever that there is a certain amount of coasting that is taking place in the upkeep of a well-established relationship.  Which, truthfully, is to be expected at this stage in my life.  It didn't creep up on me.  I spied it stalking this way as soon as Amy woke me that morning to go to the hospital.  And I'm very glad that my wife and I were able to form as strong a bond as we did in as short a time as we did prior to marriage.  Cuz there hasn't been much of any time to build on it since then. 

Frankly, she didn't seem all that bothered by the subject I raised.  Which, when I pause to think about it, seems like a bit of role reversal in a stereotypical relationship.  Ought she not to be more concerned about the status and well-being of our bond and I be the one to spurn the fluffy introspection and turn the movie up a little louder?  Hmmm...  Then there's the niggling little voice in the back of my head that's saying this is just my circuitous way of justifying the fact that I want to get laid more right now.

THAT'S more like it!

UPDATE: My mother corrected me in that 'Hutterites' are an Alberta phenomenon.  It's those darned 'Mennonites' that make the sausage in Ontario I love so much.  I have corrected the post now...

Comments

[Paula]

Or maybe you were just responding to the aphrodisiac properties of Mennonite summer sausage (said with a sardonic raised eyebrow and, from this distance, an urge to plug my nose).

Paula

[Simon]

Plug your nose for sure... That stuff's more liable to forestall foreplay than anything else that comes to mind.

Simon