Stitchpop

Gary and I were flipping channels the other night and landed on a few minutes of a stand-up routine. A woman was railing against stereotypes of what women consider to be sexy in a man.

I'll tell you what they should show in porn for women, she said. A man who wants to talk to you. About your feelings. While standing over a stove cooking you dinner. And taking care of the kids.

I looked over at Gary. "You are the perfect man," I told him.

He shrugged modestly.

I married a man who can cook, which is something I didn't know at the time, and neither did he – having lived most of his bachelor days on cheese fries, nachos, and a variety of other cheese delivery systems. But once he started actually cooking, he found that he had the ability to take several things out of the pantry and combine them in ways that I consider to be sheer genius.

Saturday, Gary decided to make a stew. We've talked about stew before and how it's one of the things we miss about not eating beef, that wonderful, stringy beefy stewyness that our mothers forced on us as children and that we now look back on with such nostalgic fondness.

Instead of beef, he used pork. And red wine, and tomatoes from my garden. Potatoes, carrots, onions, all the requisite stew stuff.

Behold. Sitting in a bowl before me, it looked like the stew of my youth. It had that same familiar, comforting aroma. Upon tasting it, I immediately set down my spoon and asked my husband to marry me.

And then last night he made chicken enchiladas. And we talked about our feelings.

I am not worthy.