Husbands are a fortunate lot.  They get to go to work, come home and eat dinner, watch some TV, and on a real stressful day, they might mow the lawn. Wives are an unfortunate group of souls.  They get to go to work, come home and fix dinner, clean up the mess the kids leave after dinner, go shopping for groceries, clean the oven, take one kid to music lessons, another to soccer and yet another to a play date with the distant cousins. On a real stressful day, moms also have to mow the lawn because dad was too busy to do it.

Now, I give a lot of credit to my wife. She is smarter than I am and if it wasn’t for a hormone induced coma, she would not have married me. But she did and now she has to tough it out for the kids for at least another fifteen years. After that, I am planning a lot of cruises so she can’t jump off the boat and abandon me.  Until then, I am like a passenger on an airplane.  I get free meals. I get to recline on a cushy seat. I get an occasional drink and all I have to do is buy a round-trip ticket every once in awhile to some place I see in the “families are forever” catalog.  Sure it is pricey, but you know how it is with the cost of gas.

Admittedly, no one is perfect and my wife will tell you that I am not perfect. But just the same, I have a license with her name on it so she can’t run off and marry a more worthy soul – at least not until she gets a really good erasure for that certificate.

I try not to abuse my position of authority.  My job, and I have learned this lesson well over the last twenty years, is to stay out of the way.  I am expert at it.  I have refined my skills and honed my talents. As I come home from work and I see my wife running out of the house with three kids in tow, I know my job is to smile, tell her how lovely she looks and step dutifully off the sidewalk to let her, the kids, and the latest science fair display case pass by. I get high marks for knowing how to bake my own breakfast cereal in the broiler and fill the bowl with orange juice – it is nothing really, but this too has taken years to perfect.

Sometimes I feel like a bachelor, but that is my fortune. Usually this occurs when my wife has had it up to “here” with me and takes the kids to go swimming at the Seven Peaks Resort in the heat of the summer. After several days in the hot sun, and a great deal of dehydration, she comes back to her senses and realizes how good she really has it in my air conditioned flat. Funny how a little torture can turn a girl’s heart.

My wife is best at being a mother and making the kids smart. On occasion the children will bring me their homework and I quickly pass it off to their mother.  It isn’t that I don’t want to help, but I haven’t done long-division since T-Rex was in fashion. I could teach the kids a thing or two about briefing the Supreme Court, but when I start talking about the law, their eyes get glossed over and they run to their math homework like it is a candy bowl on Halloween. I also give my wife credit for two science fair championships. The sad part of it is that I am more excited about expanding yeast to blow up a balloon than the kids. I guess I just missed the fun part about learning, but my kids are enjoying their school days and that will hopefully translate to a good upbringing.

Raising children and keeping a home, while also working part-time as a partner at the law firm is not for simpletons.  Going to work all day and talking on the phone to make it look like I am working hard is for simpletons.  The latter is a better example of me and the former is an example of the wife.

At the end of the day, however, when the kids are asleep, I do remember to say thanks, or at least I try to remember to say thanks. But for any day of the week that I might have forgotten, here it is in black and white.  Thank you for being a great mom.  From Rob, Caryn, Abe and Mackenzie.

And to all the mothers, moms, soon-to-be moms, might-someday-be moms and most certainly all the wives of the world, Happy Mother’s Day!  Tell your husbands to go make you some broiled cereal and orange juice for dinner and enjoy!