Pat Taub
GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN
Life-changing wisdom can come to us by surprise.
I worked with the novelist and New Yorker editor Writer William Maxwell in his last decade. After he had died, I read that he had brought his fiancée Emmy to meet his father in 1945. His father, a somber man, was delighted, and advised his son, “If you only think of her first, she will always think of you first.”
William Maxwell and his wife, Emily, 1947
I read that story more than a decade ago. It was an urgent message. I had to catch my breath. The language was plain, but how would I put it into practice? In those years, I dated women who often found daily life overwhelming. Hoping to smooth their path, I recreated myself as a kind of administrative assistant, with duties I invented. I couldn’t find someone a better job; I couldn’t heal her childhood trauma, but I could fill her refrigerator with groceries.
But the recipients of such devotion came to see me with near-contempt, perhaps from anger that they couldn’t do these things for themselves. I had become an unsalaried employee. Either I was fired or I quit. I am not a quick study: it took me years to see that I was wrong.
In April 2021, I met the remarkable woman I will call here the OAO (for One and Only). We married a year later and are happier than I can write here. Because she is that rare being, a well-adjusted self-sufficient adult, she did not need nor did she want a devoted servant. But I continued to ask myself what “thinking of her first” truly meant in practice and found that the meaning was simply in the words.
Now, I ask myself before doing something what its impact will be on the person I adore and admire. That moment’s introspection is invaluable. Legally we are a married couple; emotionally and practically we are a community. Or perhaps a tiny republic of love, defined by caring behaviors small and large. (I still like buying her presents, though.)
I could ignore the breakfast dishes in the sink or Queenie’s litter box, but if I do, then my wife has to do the work I didn’t.
It’s all in balance. She leaves the building more often than I do, so she takes the kitchen compost out with her. She is a better driver with keen night vision, so I bask in the passenger seat. I can open jars she can’t. She can tell me where something hiding in plain sight is. I am working on new ways of cooking fish. Before we run out of milk, a new container appears, without fanfare.
And she has met the world in ways I will never do, so I ask her advice. And I take it.
I do what gives me pleasure, but I know there is another person on the planet, near at hand, and that her happiness is as important or more so than mine. Knowing that is the best reason to be unselfish.
It’s not “giving to get.” It is giving because giving is in itself joyous. It’s the joy of making love tangible. The new roll of toilet paper installed, the table neatly set, the dinner cooked with care, the spill mopped up.
These acts make the most elaborate Valentine’s Day card, bouquet, or chocolates superfluous. The true reward is the easy smile on the face of the person you love. That gratification is like nothing else on the planet. I know.
William and Emmy were inseparable for more than fifty years.
Michael Steinman is a writer and retired English professor, who thinks his real work is his jazz blog (JAZZ LIVES), where, through videos of live performances worldwide, he “sends out love in a swinging 4/4.” Michael proudly proclaims, “I am married to the best person on the planet.”
