A Significant Number for The First Lady
Atlanta, GA
May 22, 2019
Today marks a major milestone.
The number twelve and its duodecuple system have a distinguished and durable history as a chronicler of human affairs and measure of human activity.
Even the prosaic rationality of the metric system, gestating during the 17th and 18th centuries, born of La Marseillaise and Marianne in 1799, and extending like kudzu to the “enlightened” corners of the world, has not entirely displaced the poetic charm of our dozenal heritage.
Twelve hours divide our clocks. Twelve months comprise our year. Twelve inches form our foot. Twelve cycles corral the celestial zoo of the Zodiac. Twelve grades link the conventional chain from kindergarten to college. Twelve days fill the Christmas calendar, inspiring whimsical Shakespeare plays and tiresome seasonal songs.
Twelve tribes bound Israel. Twelve disciples followed Christ. Twelve Tables promulgated the Roman Law. Twelve eggs compose a carton, and twelve books constitute the Aeneid. From atop Olympus, twelve gods filled the ancient Greeks with bemused fear…and Renaissance Europeans with artistic themes.
And, after these twelve strained examples, this meandering thread…like a fuse to a bomb…reaches its conclusive point:
For twelve consecutive years, my wife has turned thirty-nine years old.
It is a record held by many, yet matched by none. To me, Rita looks no different than she did just after the seventh time she turned 19, when she married me…and, by extension, most of you.
Like a pensioner buying Tesla after its IPO, that decision seemed to pay off, but with more adventure and shenanigans than she probably bargained for.
Even if it hadn’t, she would make the best of it. Like Hamlet, Rita subscribes to the notion that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” She knows, and has taught me, that we are what we think…and what those by whom we are surrounded think.
She has actually taught…and tolerated…her husband quite a bit more than that. She also realizes that despite the tendency for his head to be thick, his skin can be thin.
As such, she knows that when casting lines of advice she must, as Lloyd George counseled, bait the hook to suit the fish. Especially when she tries to reel him from his frequent forays into waves that are too rough, or water that is too deep.
Like a good surgeon, she knows she must sometimes cut in order to cure. My wife realizes that to help someone, you must tell him the truth. If you want to help yourself, you tell him what he wants to hear.
She has, needless to say, helped her husband quite a bit. And he is a much better man for it…and for everyone else.
Even so, Rita is wise enough to dispense advice sparingly, smart enough to spread appreciation liberally, and genuine enough to do both sincerely.
Yet she never disguises her sincerity as flattery. She knows, as Dale Carnegie taught, that false flattery is cheap praise. It is nothing more than telling the other person what he already thinks about himself.
As Carnegie put it, such flattery is like counterfeit money: it will eventually get you into trouble if you pass it to someone else. And, Carnegie might have added, it will not carry the recipient very far either.
Besides, Rita has little patience for superficialities…and none for lies. She knows that lies, like personal insults or government entitlements, are easy to throw out but hard to take back.
Hypocrisy repulses my wife. In some sense she would probably prefer even the amoral ancient Greeks to our self-righteous contemporaries. Our classical ancestors differed from their modern descendants not in conduct, but in candor; our greater (tho’ declining) delicacy makes it offensive for us to preach what we practice.
But Rita is not some stoic protocol of propriety and pragmatism. She can be, despite the disproportionate family burdens she currently bears, a geyser of radiant effervescence.
Dancing, like drinking, often reveals a person’s true personality. Anyone who has seen my exuberant wife cut a rug revels reflexively in her innate exhilaration. She flashes a smile so bright you can read by it, and the sparkle in her eyes could guide Odysseus from Calypso.
She appreciates the finer things and loves to travel, but she does not require much, nor need search far, for fun. Her primary pleasures derive from her two sons, her husband, and her home. She exults in the joys of the heart and pleasures of the hearth, and pours herself into them like a river to the sea.
I suppose Rita has flaws, but trying to name them would be like describing one’s own weaknesses during a job interview. It would amount to nothing more than praising with faint damns…and to me suffering real ones were I to start down that road.
Like the British Fleet drifting past Gallipoli or the Spanish Armada easing into Calais, I’ve probably gone too far already. So let’s shift our sails, and catch a more promising breeze.
Or, better still…we’ll drop anchor, raise a glass, prepare a feast, and propose a toast – to The First Lady.
Tapestries adorn the walls, rose petals cover the floor, ceremonial scrolls are read, and trumpets begin to sound. And we reach for a case of wine.
Then…like Crockett at the Alamo…we realize we are inadequately supplied for the occasion, the crowd, and the task.
One case will not be enough. On this day, we’ll need at least a Baker’s Dozen.
JD
