Actually, You Make More Than I Do

A story on marriage, translated…

The sudden onset of the afternoon rain made us stop, dead in our tracks, we’d gone to hid out in a resting area, ducking the rain.  As we’re slowly aging, our topics of discussions are around family: as we’d started talking on the subject of husbands, everybody had a ton of displeasures, and they’re all the same too: how the husbands are way too macho, not helping out around the house, and that’s not all, they don’t even mumble out a “thank you” for all of our hard work.  None of us can imagine, that if we’d died, how would these men live without us?

Being married for a long time, I’d gotten used to hearing all of these complaints, but, it was, Yu-Jiao’s words that moved me so.

She’ said, that in the past two years, all of her friends, families and relatives, as well as others around her are all retired, and, everybody has at least some amounts of pension left, and they’re contemplating on how to live out their retirements.  She’d gotten married right after she graduated from school, never worked, and naturally, she didn’t have a retirement pension, and she felt awful toward her husband for it.

She’d kept that feeling to herself and finally, one time when they were eating their meals, she’d told her husband, but, her husband, who rarely spoke a word put down his chopsticks, held her hands tightly, told her, “How can you say that?  All the way here, you’d made more than I had, you’d raised up our three children, took care of the house, and never had a day off.  And, if you really want to calculate, the nanny fees, plus the overtimes, you’d made more than my salaries, don’t say these foolish things anymore.”

Yu-Jiao’s husband’s words moved her to the core, she believed, that she was only doing what she’s supposed to, as a mother, and a wife, but, her husband had taken everything in, to his heart.

Her words made us all cry, turns out, we’re not looking for much, just wanted to hear our guys tell us that they appreciated what we’d done.

So, here’s a look into women’s mind, and, the writer is correct, on that we don’t want that much, just a little bit of care and concern from time to time, to let us know, that we’re appreciated, that you’re NOT taking us for granted, is that so much to ask?  I think not!