How Can You Not Love A Man Like That?

Pull my skirt up in the kitchen and call me Baby

As I wrote in another story recently, linked below, I am married to a man much younger than I. 12 years younger, to be exact. The older I get, the bigger the distance seems.

I feel sorry for Hugh Jackman’s wife. Have you seen all of the media stories dwelling on how she is so much older than he is? Ugh!

I have long been confident in my looks, as well as in my value as a human being. But as time goes by, doubts will creep in.

We live in a youth-oriented society. I am tall and slender. I was very fit for many years, have been blessed with great legs and good skin, and those things have not yet failed me, thank God.

But the calendar tells me I am no longer young. Damn!

Frustratingly, clothing choices today seem to hover somewhere between Whore of Babylon and Ladies Who Lunch. Neither of those suit me. So what to do?

There are few things more pitiful than a woman trying to dress and behave like her granddaughters. We still feel the same inside — I get that.

I still feel like Stevie Nicks in her prime.

I still love to dance and ride motorcycles and rock a bikini.

He still loves to smack my ass and pull my skirt up in the kitchen.

But the last thing I want to do is look ridiculous. I have made my granddaughters swear an oath on my grave to prevent me from doing that at all costs.

I trust their judgment. But, at the same time, I still want some more tattoos, too. Thankfully, one of them is a tattoo artist, so she can’t put the kibosh on that without losing all of her street cred.

It’s not unusual for my husband to turn up 70s rock loud in his shop. It’s not unusual for me to walk past the open door and hear him wailing “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” at the top of his lungs.

Then he waggles his eyebrows at me. He’s such a lecher.

He loves to sing, and he’s pretty good at it.

Sometimes, he’ll beg me to play the piano so he can sing along. It’s hokey, but it’s also sweet and endearing. Our own little thing we do.

Recently, taking out the mail, I noticed him blasting his music and rocking out to one of his favorite groups, Blondie, on our back lot. He was working on our boat. I walked across the road to watch him, because he was just so damn cute dancing around out there.

He snatched me up and gave me a big kiss. Then he started dancing with me on the grass, twirling me around, belting out “Pret-ty Baaa-by, I lovvvve you!”

Right in front of God and the entire neighborhood.

They didn’t blink an eye. They’re used to us by now, I guess. Sometimes, I wonder how I ever managed to end up with this life.

He calls me Bebe (only he says it “BeeBee”) because that’s the designer tee I was wearing the first time he met me, on a blind date. I was also fortuitously wearing high-heel booties with pointy toes.

That was the pièce de résistance. He has a bit of a shoe fetish, as Fate would have it.

Today, my husband wants to go on a motorcycle ride. He’s always so disappointed if I don’t want to go. He reminds me of my little grandson asking me to play video games with him, even though I suck at it.

He doesn’t like to play alone, either.

I can still hear my Grandma Kate saying, “If your husband asks you to go along, no matter what you’re doing, you go. Otherwise, he’ll stop asking.”

Grandma Kate went everywhere with Grandpa Bill. She was as hefty as he was small. A little bitty guy with a crew cut, she had pocketbooks bigger than he was. They were the original Jack Spratt and his wife, happily going places together for over 50 years.

But I’m feeling old and tired today. I’ve been struggling with a medication that has made me fatigued and wrought havoc with my hair. I am feeling, when I look in the mirror, (as my mother used to describe some tawdry women), a little shopworn.

My husband stands in the doorway of the bedroom patiently waiting as I’m getting dressed for our ride. I’ve made him happy because I’m going along. He looks sexy just standing still, faded jeans, white tee shirt and those dark blue eyes, a rolled bandana wrapped around his forehead.

The touch of silver in his hair only makes him more handsome.

Not only does he not even see the flaws I think are so blatantly obvious, he can’t understand my insecurities. To him, I am the sexiest, most beautiful woman alive. He constantly grumbles that other men are hitting on me.

God bless him.

He’s just watching me as I’m putting on my jeans. I ask, “What?”

I feel so unattractive. Surely he’s thinking he married some old woman.

“I look like hell,” I say, almost in tears.

He’s quiet for a minute and then he says, slowly, appreciatively, wickedly, “I just like watching you pull up your pants.”

How can you not love a man like that?

© 2022 Conni Walkup Hull

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you. For more of my adventures, look below.