Like Pot Roast to Pop tarts: An excerpt from Mouthfuls of Magnolia and Mint Juleps

Menu:

Breakfast

French Toast/Scrambled Eggs/Turkey Bacon/Biscuits

What he eats:

A bowl of cereal

Lunch

Meatballs/Homefries

What he eats:

A Turkey sandwich

Supper

Pot roast/baked potatoes/onions/peppers/carrots

What he eats:

Pop tarts

Southern women don’t come unglued. We’re programmed not to. We swallow whole lumps of wrongs and pain, letting them razor-edge their way through ourselves and catch the trickles of blood that drip from our lips on needle-point monogrammed cloth napkins before anyone notices. We swish our mouths with bleach and swallow it so that the smell does not linger on our breath. We are brought up to be wives. Not to sass back because no man wants to marry a slick-mouthed woman. What they didn’t prepare us for, one of those lessons that have to be learned hands-on, is the never being IT for our husbands.

Wives are not fantasies. We are the ones who wait with our hands in our laps after long days of keeping house, bearing and raising children, to get the dismissive forehead kiss, when we get a kiss at all. We are the ones who are on their arms not in their hearts or loins. Yet we are the ones who work the hardest. Desire the least. Beg for nothing. Contradict even less. We are the ones who are still there when the fantasies have moved on to better suitors and the men realize that someone has to bring forth their offspring.

Wives get the missionary position. We are not craved in lingerie. Foreplay is not a usual part of the process because it serves no utilitarian purpose. We are not held afterwards, but dismissed to rest back to back. Or to hold them until we fall asleep. Usually finding that sometime shortly after our breathing has settled, they have left the bed altogether.

Wives are pot roasts. We provide the sustenance. All the frills of a life of status but none of the benefits of his joy. Wives are necessary for the sake of propriety and legitimacy of children. Never the cause of the blood-filled pistol that fires off aspiring little people into our eager selves. Solely the temporary beneficiaries.

Fantasy women are the pop tarts. Their sassy sweetness is the proverbial kryptonite to any being with a penis. They possess all of the traits not accepted for wives. The characteristics that we leave at the alter of puberty. Yet they have no real value. They rotten your teeth (spirit). Take you out of yourself and destroy your body. But they taste good. So they are the meal of choice when something “good” is desired. When the name brand isn’t accessible, they will go for the off-brand. They aren’t as good, but they’re still more desirable than pot roast.

Men never outgrow pop tarts. Pot roasts are picked over for long periods of time at the table and usually majority of it is fed to the dog or the waste disposal. 

The other day, I hid his pop tarts from him after he’d eaten all but 1 and a half of the 8 pastries in the box. He asked me to because he couldn’t control himself. And then for the next couple of days, I got to hear about how badly he wanted a pop tart. Whether there was food on the stove or in the fridge, he wanted a pop tart. Finally, I gave in and told him where to find his pop tarts while I was out running errands for the house.

Not quite sure when I became a wife, exactly, but, I know that I am one. And that is a pain that cannot be placed into words of understanding to anyone who is not a wife. Maybe I should dust off my fishnets, mini-skirt, crop top, and high heels… Nah… I have WOMEN to raise. No room in my life for pop tart antics.

Today, I come unglued. (So forgive my rambling.)