I'm hovering.

As my blonde haired, blue eyed Catholic wife is in the kitchen feverishly working on a marinade for our traditional Yom Kippur dinner tomorrow night, I am doing what any red blooded Jewish man would be doing. I’m hovering. You see, a little known fact is that in a household where the man is Jewish and the woman is not, the roles in the kitchen are reversed. I do the cooking and I shop for the groceries. I’m not sure why it works out this way but it does. So tonight, I find myself hovering. Giving pointers on how to peel the garlic. Asking if she needs help peeling the onions. Helping her find the grater and just basically getting in her way. I need to sit down, I need to watch Sportscenter, I need to just scratch myself or something.


Here’s the difference. When I go grocery shopping I can spend $100 and get us enough food to last us for at least a week. And that includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. I can spot a good price on chicken broth quicker than Tim McCarver can weasel himself into the top NLCS story line. When my wife goes grocery shopping, she’ll spend $100 and come back with 2 oranges, some eye cream, a Perrier and some bath salts. I can’t ever figure it out.


The strangest thing of all is that these roles won’t ever go back. I can tell. In a relationship, especially a marriage, couples naturally take on certain tasks either by choice, by necessity or because they drew the short straw. And then, that’s the way it goes. It’s why I’ve never done laundry and she’s never taken out the trash. It’s why I’ve never given Patch a bath and she’s never picked up a piece of his shit. These are the unspoken rules of our relationship. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.


(Wait a minute. When did Apples and Moustaches turn into the final scene of a Doogie Howser episode?)