Yeah, I’m cribbing from the other thread, but I’m sitting here crying, because I know that one day, my daughter will be able to say the cool thing her Dad did.
Nov. 5, 2005. My husband admitted to me that he was a drug addict. I was clueless. Our daughter had been born Sept 10 and was premature. I was sitting at the dining room table clipping coupons trying to save pennies, while he admitted he had a habit that had him spending up to $5k a month.
He quit cold turkey, went through almost 3 months of very agonizing withdrawal. Attended 90 Narcotics Anonymous meetings in 90 days. Got a job working as a plumber just to bring money in. He would work 12 hours a day often, while going through withdrawal.
We are coming up on his 2 years clean. One day, my daughter may or may not know what her Daddy went through for her. They say you can only do it for yourself, but by god, he did it for her long enough to be able to do it for himself.
How he went through that, I’ll never know. But it amazes me. And he did it with so much class. He took all the anger, all the suffering in stride. Or, as my friend said “I figured that having to come home to you would be punishment enough.” Boy was she right. He’d have been safer in rehab.
But Kudo’s to him. Not my parent, but my kids parent.
Oh, and once going through a toll booth, it didn’t register a coin after we had pulled forward, he stuck his hand out the window and flipped back a quarter and it hit the basket perfectly. To this day, I’m sure the guy in the car behind us though my husband was the coolest guy ever.
Taught himself woodworking, because he felt like it. I mean, he had help (Norm Abrams on TV, for starters) but he basically started from ground zero in the knowledge department, and did a lot of reading and videotape watching to get himself up to speed.
Along the way he also learned carousel horse carving and he carved our son a really amazing rocking horse.
I remember last November at the SilverMan. Looking out over Lake Mead the morning before the race. It was cold, windy and the water was very choppy. Little white caps where forming out in the middle of the lake.
Shit I thought to myself, in 24hours my Wife is going to be swimming 2.4 miles through that crap.
About a year ago my mother had knee replacement surgery, and I went to stay with her for about a week because I knew my dad would be no help. I was right and then some; not only did he not help her at all, but he was actually detrimental (leaving water on the floor in the bathroom, making snotty vulgar remarks when the nurse was there, refusing her request to go to the store for fucking stool softener while I was upstairs working) – total jackass.
One night while I was there I sat in my room late one night griping on my cell to Mr. S back at home about my jerk dad. He said he almost wished he was still unemployed, because then we could bring her to our house and he would be glad to take care of her while she healed.
At this point I need to tell you that my mom drives my hubby more than a little bonkers. He’s polite to her, but her personality irritates him. Yet he was willing to invite her to stay in our home AND do the personal hands-on care for her that I was doing, so that I could get back to work (I was the main breadwinner at the time).
This is why I keep him. (And why it looks like he’s shaping up to be a great CNA [certified nursing assistant]; he just passed his class with flying colors and is waiting to take the certification exam.)
Mom had to stay at home anyway, because we live too far from her doctors, but it was just so sweet that he even made the suggestion.
I was going to wade in with a story after seeing the title but after the OP I realize I got nothing.
Props to your hubby for being a real man (not snarky at all…I really mean that…he made a mistake and dealt with it to make it right and clearly it was not easy at all).
I’ve got two of them, although they aren’t nearly as serious and awe-inspiring as some of the other tales told so far.
The first one involved my wife inadvertently running over one of those orange rubber warning cones that are set up around constructions sites and whatnot. This one happened to be in the middle of the street right around a corner we had turned. She stopped, and I offered to get out of the car and extract it from underneath the car where it had clearly (by the sound) become wedged. Instead, she said, “Hang on!” and threw the car into reverse. And I’ll be damned if that cone didn’t unwedge itself and pop back up in the EXACT spot where it had been standing previously!
The second one, I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t witnessed it. We were in Vegas playing at a craps table. My wife took over as shooter, and being focused on making sure both of the dice got to the other wall, she took aim at the far side of the table. One of the die took a perfect hop, bounced nearly straight up and landed neatly in the shirt pocket of a gentleman standing on that end. I think she got applause for that one.
On the serious side, I’ve watched my wife work through and overcome many, many things in her life for which I am extraordinarily proud of her, but as those things are personal, it is not my place to share them.
I watched my partner, at 2 a.m. on Easter Sunday, assist her kids’ cat in the birthing process. She had already had two kittens, and the third was on the way.
All we could see coming out was the tail. :eek: It was a breech birth! Tribble was a teeny cat, so we were in danger of losing both of them.
Luckily, Swampwitch spent lots of time on a farm, and was a midwife’s assistant, as well as a Labor and Delivery nurse. So she popped on her non-latex gloves with a <snap!> and used her pinky to tease the kitten out, bit by bit. Gently twisting, she finally got a small, wet, black-and-white form out of its mother, but it wasn’t breathing.
After using a bulb to suck fluid out of its nose and mouth, she rubbed it vigorously with a washcloth, until finally…breath!
Mother and kitten were both fine. The kitten was a beautiful tuxedo with a little black goatee. We named him Mojo, he is enormous and spoiled, and (now a year and a half old) lives with SW’s parents.
WhyNot, as soon as I saw your user name and the word “this”, I knew what image you were posting. It made such a big impact on me the first time I saw it here on SDMB - so long ago now - and I still remember what a cool guy I thought your husband was/is.
WhyNot, is there anyway we could talk you into starting a “Ask the Mom of a Premie” thread? I have a lot of questions. I have a friend who may be caring for a baby born at 24 weeks.
Demonstrate incredible grace under fire through the worst of my depression. Help me get fed, bathed, and medicated when I did not have the energy or interest in surviving. Took away and secured all the dangerous shit (including meds) when I was feeling suicidal or self-destructive. Sat with me in the psychiatric intake room for 7 hours with nothing to eat while we waited for them to find me a room.
Run 10 miles. He used to do cross-country running in high school, and the day I actually saw him do an extended run I was pretty blown away.
It’s hard to understand if you don’t know my husband–he is one of the most mild-mannered, non-violent, kind, conflict-avoiding people you will ever meet in your life. To make a long story short, he comes from a huge, wealthy, patriarchal family on his Dad’s side and they don’t like to acknowledge when things aren’t okay. His little sister and his Dad have been having trouble for years since the divorce, and I’m not going into details but his Dad has had a history of making serious mistakes in the way he treats her.
We were all on a family vacation (33 of us) in Europe paid for by his grandparents (uh, did I mention he comes from a wealthy family?) We were going through customs in Venice when my Father-in-Law hauled off and decked my sister-in-law (who is 16) so hard across the face that her sunglasses flew off.
My husband, my mild-mannered and always self-controlled husband, went fucking apeshit right there in the waterbus terminal. He told off his father in front of the entire family (it actually looked like it was possible this could escalate to violence, my husband was screaming so loud it was impossible to hear what he was saying, right up in his father’s face), and when his grandpa defended his father’s behavior, he told his grandfather, the freakin’ GODFATHER, that he was wrong and it is NEVER okay to hit someone. By the time he got done, customs wanted to know what was going on, and we were briefly detained.
I have never in my life seen my husband behave this way before, but I know it meant everything to his sister for him to stand up for her. All he really has to say in retrospect is, ‘‘I probably overreacted, but it’s still never right to hit someone. It’s a good thing I did not have an established history of violent behavior because it is probably the only reason I didn’t hit my Dad that day.’’
People really don’t get it when I say he’s a fucking warrior, but really, I’ve watched him walk through fire. His whole being is pretty cool to me.
My husband does a lot of cool things, but there’s one thing that has always stuck out to me.
It was a few months after I met him, when he was just my boyfriend. My family had a whole herd of puppies, including one named Macca. Macca was our favorite puppy. He had such a great personality. But, I think his personality is what done him in. He was fearless and friendly, and one night, he slipped under my mom’s car on the icy driveway. We couldn’t stop because if we did, we’d get stuck in the snow. Jaime jumped out of the car as soon as mom stopped and ran over to the dog, keeping my sisters away from him.
He very carefully picked up the puppy and cradled it against his chest, then walked away from my now hysterical sisters. He didn’t want me close to him, but I could hear him talking to the dog and petting it. After a little bit, he went to my mom and asked what he should do with the dog. Later, I asked him what was going on. He said he could feel all of the bones were broken, and it was smashed, and he didn’t want my sisters to see it. He also didn’t want it to die alone and scared and cold. His shirt was ruined with the blood, but he didn’t notice that until much later.
Sorry for the hijack, but olives, have you considered the fact that your husband’s bravery in the face of mistreatment may be to your credit? I don’t recall any discussions that we have participated in together- but I’m familiar with your input, and you seem to be a champion for people treated unjustly, and you have also been very open about your own occasional (past) sense of powerlessness.
Maybe this is true of many of you; we often enter a union unique, but none of us leave a union unchanged and uninfluenced by a loved one. Take credit for some of these stories, if you didn’t play a direct hand in the heroic deeds here, you at least helped inspire them, or reinforce them. If any of you have a story of a partner’s heroism, then you, also are cool.
He sounds like mine. I’ve always admired him for being kind to babies, animals, and old people.
I just remembered another one. About ten years ago we went to the funeral of a high school friend of mine. This was a person Mr. S had never met; he was only there for me. After the service I stopped to speak to my friend’s parents and brothers, and Mr. S had a few words with them about how he understood their feelings, as he had lost three family members within five years to the same disease, and he wished them peace. Again, people he’d never met, and yet he had such kind words for them.
