O P I N I O N
I was being a dick.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this, or use a euphemism. The holiday season tends to wreak havoc on my moods, the short days trigger Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I have the unfortunate tendency to run afoul.
I knew it when I woke up that morning, lying in bed after hitting snooze for the third time, staring at my alarm clock and watching the digits and waiting for the next staticky blast of classic rock. When depression descends, I feel it on a cellular level, in the marrow of my bones, and contrary to what some may believe, depression doesn’t always manifest in melancholy.
Sometimes I’m not sad. Sometimes I’m just a dick. And unfortunately, the people closest to me—the ones I love most—bear the brunt of my dick-ness.
In this case, it was my poor wife. Although I texted her that morning, during my prep period, to warn her about my sour mood, it still didn’t stop me from escalating from irritable to cantankerous to full-scale dick when I got home.
I started picking fights for no good reason, and by the next morning, we weren’t speaking. Rather, Liz wasn’t speaking to me because I was being a dick.
But I kept needling her with wise-ass comments and passive-aggressive remarks that—after two decades of being married—I knew would get under her skin. So Liz used the nuclear option.
“Fine. You can buy the gifts for your family this year,” she said to me.
Suddenly, I stopped being a dick.
The thought of having to take on the responsibility of purchasing gifts scared me straight, as I recalled my single days, roaming the mall on Christmas Eve like the Ancient Mariner, lost and despondent, trying to find a store that sold scented candles.
The fact of the matter is that my wife, quietly and graciously, has shouldered the responsibility of finding out what our kids, our nieces and nephews, siblings and parents want for Christmas each year and then purchasing the gifts.
When it comes to buying a gift for my wife, I ask my daughters to buy for her, assuming that my wife doesn’t want a Red Sox jersey for Christmas each year. Besides, picking out clothes for Liz is an abject lesson in futility, seeing I have the fashion sense of a cold ham.
Often on Christmas morning, I’m every bit as surprised by what is in the boxes as the recipients of the gifts. And I have a feeling I’m not the only husband who watches the kids open their presents with a sense of wonder and awe.
But her threat worked, and while I was still feeling blue, I was able to navigate away from being a dick. For the seven-millionth time in 20 years, I had to eat crow and apologize and acknowledge another thing that my wife does that I sometimes don’t always notice because I’m too busy being a dick.
