“Honey, where’s the packaging tape?” This is what my husband asked me one day while we were trying to get together a couple of boxes to send to our children, who were all off in college. If you think it sounds insane to have three children in college at the same time, imagine what it was like when they were all in diapers at the same time. To be honest, I would prefer the former. I suppose, in part, this is because we pay for half of their school, and when they were all in diapers there was no contributing from them except in the aspect of why we needed to keep buying diapers.

Which isn’t really contributing, in my opinion. Regardless, three times a year for birthdays, and many more times a year for random holidays or stressful exam weeks, we send off care packages. Every single stinking time my husband will ask me where the packaging tape has gone off to. As if the packaging tape had somehow decided it would like to move to a different cupboard, or out of our house altogether. Now, after being married for over thirty years, this does not take me by surprise. For one, this is a normal occurrence with men in general. Every single wife all over the world can attest to this, whether it’s a bushman in Africa asking where his nose bone has crawled off to, or a Japanese business tycoon who is looking right at the chopsticks but wondering out loud where they are. To be honest, I think it’s kind of endearing.

Of course I roll my eyes, and of course it’s annoying sometimes. But for the most part it reminds me that I am married, that I am spending my life with someone, and that even though it doesn’t make sense to me why he can’t figure out where the packaging tape is on his own, I wouldn’t trade his company, everything that he contributes to my life, simply to have that one phrase erased.

I mean, really, if I didn’t hear that question anymore it would mean thirty years of my life had disappeared. It would mean that I don’t have children to send care packages to. And then who would I be scouring the one and three dollar section of Target for? Cycling in the new products is the only incentive I need to send off another couple of boxes.