marriage

If you aren’t a Jew you might be unfamiliar with a Ketubah. The Ketubah is the marriage contract. It outlines the husband’s duties to his wife and then asks that the wife be a good wife because apparently it is much simpler to be a good wife than a good husband. In this way it is an archaic piece of paper. But what you don’t see (because you don’t read Hebrew) is that in every Ketubah the husband is required to read all of his wife’s emails.

I’ve circled the part that reads, “A good and righteous husband shall read all emails his wife sends him within two hours.” It’s amazing how an ancient document had this much foresight.

Last night I asked Mr. G about the sarong thing and he just looked confused. Then I asked him if he could fly coach for nine hours and he said, “You know, you send me emails all day with absolutely no context and I don’t know what the right answer is.”

I thought about it a bit and realized that I do send him a lot of emails without explanation but I’m not sure that these require explanation. I had mentioned that Alexander wanted to see Machu Pichu and it’s no secret that saying no to my son is not my strong point in the summertime so obviously when I send him an email that says:

Can you take a nine hour flight in coach?

He should know that we have enough miles for the four of us to fly coach and that business class is a $10,000 ticket and we need to either fly coach or pick a new location. Seriously, how hard is that to understand?

And when I send him an email three hours later with a link to this kid he’s supposed to email back about how cute and funny it is. Even a robot could figure that out.

Doesn’t every part of you know that this kid is going to be just fine wherever he lands in the world?

The next day I spent hours looking up theorems online. You see I stumbled on The Sarong Theorem Archive and it’s quite simple. It’s an electronic archive of people solving theorems in sarongs. I became obsessed with understanding the Infinitude of Primes and since my brother was busy working I thought I’d email it to my husband who is contractually obligated to stop working and humor me.

I’ve sent him out of context photos of the kids at camp, half written to-do lists and confirmed various appointments including but not limited to: Alexander’s school, the dog trainer, the cat behavioralist and the cat communicator. I’ve sent him comics, links to badly written blog posts about his corporation from bloggers that would otherwise never be read, and pictures of the animals.

I’m pretty sure that we’ll be headed to Peru because we have determined that we can probably survive a flight of that length in coach. We have also determined that Mr. G will never be excited by sarongs and prime numbers and that kids with spoons on their faces sometimes depress him. He prefers that I not spend his money on a woman who communicates with cats and translates it to me. He likes the idea of the cat behavioralist and agrees that though the dog trainer is annoying we should continue to employ her.

I’ve promised to try and add some context to the emails before I send them but we’ve been married long enough that neither of us are optimistic.