A Beautiful Mind

I’ve come to the conclusion that my husband’s mind makes that of Russell Crowe’s character in A Beautiful Mind appear simplistic. What goes on inside that massive head of his should be the subject of medical documentary series on TLC, like the man whose skin has turned to wood or the lady with the huge goiter on her leg. His brain is equally as intriguing and I’m sure that with the proper MRI, doctors would be mystified by the way each section of his brain lights up the scan in response to select stimulus. I know that personally, the connection between one thought and its aftermath has perplexed me on more than one occasion.

For example, one day, my husband and I carried on a perfectly logical discussion about the dogs’ needing haircuts. Nothing abnormal was stated, nothing to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I left the discussion satisfied that I would schedule an appointment with the groomers in the near future. Thus, you can imagine my surprise when I returned home the next evening to find that my husband, with no prior experience in dog styling, other than lopping off one of Farrah’s toe nails in the clipping incident of 2003, had taken it upon himself to shave both dogs. Knowing we had no proper grooming tools in our possession, I was further horrified to learn that he had used his own electric shaver to complete the transformations. It is not as if our dogs already had short hair and this was a relatively small undertaking. No, our dogs are both long-haired beasts with thick undercoats. How he used a man’s electric razor was beyond my imagination.

However, the shock did not end with the realization that my husband had perilously attacked our dogs with a personal grooming device. While Farrah appeared to have endured the shearing unscathed and still resembling my beloved dog, Reggie was an entirely different story. In true male bonding fashion, my husband gave Reggie a mohawk. On his sides, his ebony black fur was now buzzed to reveal the pale pink skin beneath, but down the middle of his back, extending from his head to his tail, was a much thicker line of fur, making our dog look more like a hyena than the pitiful black lab/something mix that he was. All I could think about was what the neighbors would say as I walked my freak of a dog down the street. Sweet. Of course, my husband thought the mohawk was the best thing since sliced bread and was very paternally proud of his creation. His now otherwise wimpy dog with attachment issues was now cool enough to join a biker gang or at least hang with the pit bulls at the dog park. I guess I learned my lesson in this situation though: Don’t give your husband any ideas of which you might not like the consequences.

Unfortunately this mohawk style became a pattern around our house for a while. Soon after the dogs received their makeovers, I sent my husband out to mow our lawn. A short time later, too short a time, he was finished. “Are you done already?” I asked. “I have other things to do, I’ll finish the rest of the lawn when I get back,” he replied. Famous last words. As I peered out the window onto our lush green lawn, his handiwork again took me aback. He had proceeded to only mow the outer perimeter of our lawn, which was already beginning to resemble a jungle with tall grasses and an excessive amount of small wildlife seeking shelter in its shade. Inside this perimeter, the savannah still remained. Great, now both my lawn and my dog look like remnants from an ‘80s hair band, I mused. Needless to say, he did not return later to finish the lawn and we were those neighbors for a while. Fortunately, that was the end of the mohawk phase for a while.

Another incident where one innocent situation turned into a full-fledge mental subterfuge occurred on a recent trip to Nashville for a family event. Upon arrival my husband noticed that he had failed to pack an adequate number of socks for the festivities. As we discussed the predicament, I completely expected him to rewear a pair when necessary. Little did I know what he actually had in mind.

On the final day of our trip, after all of the socks had been worn, and my husband was still in need of a pair, he appeared to have a brainstorm, or a brain cloud like Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano. Either way, the next thing I knew my husband had mentally transported himself back to the 19th century to solve his problem. With the tap running, the mini bar of soap provided by the hotel in one hand and his white athletic socks in the other, he attempted to wash his footwear in the sink. For a man who struggles to put his own dishes in the dishwasher, the vision of him physically cleaning something made me a bit light-headed. However, he was quite proud of his idea. “We have to leave in 30 minutes. How are you going to dry those,” I asked, eyeing his soaking wet socks. As he squeezed excess water from his foot covers, he simply picked up the hairdryer attached to the wall in response. While I tried to explain to him the pitfalls of placing a water soaked item on top of an electrical device, he refused to listen.

Nevertheless, as soon as he placed the ankle of the sock over the front of the hair dryer, the machine immediately shorted out. Surprise! But my husband was not to be defeated by the properties of electric conduction. He simply squeezed out some more water, hit the reset button on the blower and tried again. This time his contraption worked for a bit longer and then cut out. With tunnel vision focus, my husband persisted with his work.

Finally, he was able to convince the dryer to work consistently with his sock firmly attached to the front, blowing like a kite in the wind. Confident that he was now successful, my husband walked away to finish getting dressed. Unfortunately, when he returned to check on his innovation, he discovered that he was now slowly burning a hole in his sock with the heat. He quickly removed the sock, but the damage had been done. Like a true man, he did not throw those socks out and wore them as planned that day. Every time he wears that specific pair, I can not help but giggle when I observe the brown burn mark on the ankle and remember my husband and his single minded belief that he could be his own Laundromat in the bathroom of our hotel room.

A final recent incident that made my mind swirl like a tornado in Kansas, involved the Passover holiday. Every year, I always stage a Seder to celebrate the event regardless of whether we have any Jewish friends of not. This year was not going to be an exception and as I gathered my recipes and made my grocery list, my husband decided that he wanted to have brisket this year. Being a vegetarian, brisket had not entered into our celebration in the past, thus I was surprised by his new suggestion. However, he was adamant. After he chastised me, “What kind of Jew are you that you don’t have brisket for Passover?” I’d had enough. “The vegetarian kind,” I responded. “I’ll make you chicken or fish, but I don’t do briskets.” As I had learned by then, once my husband had an idea in his head, there was nothing I could do to purge it.

“I’ll make a brisket then,” he announced. This was the same man who said that he didn’t make me dinner as a romantic gesture because he took me out instead. Other than the occasional grilled cheese sandwich and DiGiorno oven pizza, I didn’t think that I’d ever seen my husband cook an actual meal during or time together. A brisket seemed a bit more than his limited culinary skills could handle, but his mind was made up. So, he made the necessary inquiries on the internet and via a phone call to my mother and obtained a recipe. Sure enough, the next afternoon what appeared to be an entire side of goat or lamb or whatever brisket is made of, appeared in my fridge. For a vegetarian you can understand how a six pound slab of meat covering an entire shelf in my fridge was a bit disconcerting, but he was determined to have his brisket, so I wasn’t going to protest, too much. However, I did remind my husband that since the brisket was his Passover project, I bore no responsibility and would not offer any sort of assistance in his endeavor other than to pull out the fire extinguisher if necessary, and I was certain that it would be.

As the Passover preparations began, we took a closer look at the brisket recipe and it seemed to call for continuous supervision, something that my husband could not provide during his time at work. As previously stated, I refused to baste or rotate or saturate his meat product; besides, I had kugels and tzimmes and what felt like eight five apples to prepare for the rest of the meal. Fortunately, Lipton onion soup mix came through for us. Randomly, they provided an easy, stick-it-in-the-oven and let it cook recipe that allowed my husband to make his brisket and me to stay true to my word.

In the end, my husband had his Passover brisket and while it wasn’t like Nana used to make, it was edible and a few diners at our Seder even had seconds. I have now learned better than to intervene when my husband has an idea in his head, however ludicrous it sounds in the beginning, unless it threatens someone’s safety or national security. Will we have a brisket again next year? I hope not, but I wouldn’t count it out as a possibility.

Clearly, my husband is a man of Rainman like focus and persistence. Anyone who has ever seen the classroom-sized white board on the wall in our home office, with his lists and ideas all organized in different columns and differentiated by color, can attest to this. I am slowly discovering that it is better to go with the flow when he has one of his brainstorms as well as choose my words carefully because I never know how my husband will interpret what I have said. I am not sure that I want to entirely understand how my husband’s mind works, as I am certain that I would be a bit terrified at what I would find. Nevertheless, his ideas definitely keep my life interesting and for that I am grateful, even if I won’t admit it at the time.