I made her spinach pancakes. I mean they are good for her and she will be happy. She will be grateful. That is not what happened. She saw them on the table and frowned. She put maple syrup on one and tried a piece. She frowned.
That frown has lots of power. When I was young, I often fantasized about completely overpowering her. I would get her into a position where she could not move. I had her completely in my power. But she frowned. My power and my energy just drained right out of me. Damned frown! A frown and I immediately want to fix it, go into a song and dance that replaces the frown with a giggle, a gleam of delight.
You have seen those signs in the Cracker Barrel gift shops: "Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." I am confident that there are uxorious situations ("ux" = Latin for 'wife', it's an well-established word for a husband overly concerned with his wife's orders and whims). Girls and women, just like men and boys, can be overly catered to. However much I love her, admire her and want her, I have to be ready to disagree, sometimes forcefully, extensively and tenaciously. I am and I do. It can be nourishing, sustaining to have a good, ongoing battle.
But when she doesn't really disagree, she is willing to eat the spinach pancakes, she tries but that grimace, that frown, makes me want to open her mouth and pry the half-chewed mess out of her mouth, just like we had to do with our 1 1/2 yr. old daughter who had stuffed too many jelly beans in her mouth. A frown means I have failed when I aimed at delighting her, a frequent goal. When I succeed, it is lovely so I like to delight, even when she isn't in the mood to be delighted. She lets me know that mood with a frown.
I know that women are intelligent and I am confident their intelligence differs in some ways at some times from that of most men. I think we need women leaders and theorists and thinkers. We need guidance from both women and men. Men seem to growl, snarl, threaten so we get plenty of chances to see their displays of displeasure. But the zapping power of their frown is less. I guess they overuse it. But her frown has real stopping power.
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