Calm after 'kukosana'

You get home to a five-course dinner. Carol went all Mexican and Italian in the kitchen and the foods on the table are something out of a five-star hotel brochure. The food is very suggestive. Half of the things on the table can be found on the list of the world’s most potent aphrodisiacs. Carol should go easy on these women magazines.

But you are starving and happy that Carol took you seriously when you called from the airport to say you were famished. Her choice of music is telling. Where do women pick these things? So, you go straight into the rituals of savoring five courses in the company of your wife who is eating so lightly.

Carol looks so radiant, so charming, and vulnerable, you wonder why you put her through so much pain.

Every man has a reason they settled for their wife. In the case of your Carol, it has to do with her snobbish demeanor that can mislead so many to think she is just a corporate wife. But when you come down to it, she can make just as a good a housewife, she just hates playing second fiddle, which you are comfortable with.

Anyway, there is an awkwardness in your conversation, both of you embarrassed at the childishness of the last few weeks. Actually, most of the problems in marriages are childish disagreements. But that is in the past. For now, until someone — obviously you — screws over and Carol goes off the cliff.

“Who taught you to cook?” you ask in the way of creating a conversation.

“He he, cookbooks...Master Chef...but really, si I can cook, kwani?”

You notice, she is slightly shy, almost embarrassed for overdoing stuff. As in when was the last time, you dressed your servings at home?

“We should quarrel every week for me to receive these treats,” you say, tongue-in-cheek.

“Weee!” she screams, pointing at you, in a manner to suggest, don’t dare.

You devour the main course, not sparing much, until she wonders if you ate at all over the two weeks. You notice Carol really missed you since she is going out of her way to make you so comfortable to a point it is slightly vexing.

But you can’t complain. For now, you are king in her universe. She serves you some wine, which you decline, insisting that real men can’t take wine. She opts to bring you some whiskey to get you in the mood.

You notice that you are both so brief, nobody wants to say anything that might spark off another war and spoil the mood. Tonight, is the night, and it seems like, some really make-up love-making will take place. You are both so ready for it, the sexual tension in the room is too much it is about to explode and Carol is nuts. You are up to the task, and you both needed this in the way of the apology.

And just like that, you rescue your marriage that was almost going down the grain.

“You were saying that we go see a marriage counselor?” you ask her in the post-coital slumber. She pinches you, disapprovingly,

“You silly man!” Maybe she is right.