Waldman to Chabon: I Only Have Eyes For You
Today's epistemological question comes via The New York Times' 'Style' section: Can a woman stalk her own husband?
From Ayelet Waldman's Truly, Madly, Guiltily:
Can my bad motherhood be my husband's fault? Perhaps he just inspires more complete adoration than other husbands. He cooks, cleans, cares for the children at least 50 percent of the time.
If the most erotic form of foreplay to a mother of a small child is, as I've heard some women claim, loading the dishwasher or sweeping the floor, then he's a master of titillation.
He's handsome, brilliant and successful. But he can also be scatterbrained, antisocial and arrogant. He is a bad dancer, and he knows far too much about Klingon politics and the lyrics to Yes songs. All in all, he's not that much better than other men. The fault must be my own.
[...]
Even now I am not always in the mood. By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat. I am also a compulsive reader. Put together fatigue and bookwormishness, and you could have a situation in which nobody ever gets any. Except that when I catch a glimpse of my husband from the corner of my eye - his smooth, round shoulders, his bright-blue eyes through the magnification of his reading glasses - I fold over the page of my novel.
Well, he was once one of People Magazine's '50 Most Beautiful People' (and we did compliment his looks recently), but c'mon! This is just creepy.
As Waldman says, "Sometimes I think I am alone in this obsession with my spouse." Alone, but no longer quiet about it.
Related: "You're supposed to marry the person you love, Mom" [Salon]
