I’m not the perfect husband. I know, I know. Everybody knows that. I wasn’t really asking for examples. I don’t need more data. It is, yes, stipulated.

Still I was trying to offer love. This was my vision: Last year it was like Covid Covid Covid all the time and my heart had just gotten a new valve and I was never quite sure if my chest would pop open and my heart would stop. So no, I didn’t get around to getting the grass off that little stone patio by the barn that emerged when my friend John, decades ago, said well we have extra stones for this drainage ditch, what shall we do with them?

And I said well what about dump them by that old horse barn which is clearly not today for horses or anything else impressive but would be great with a little bed of white stones in front of it?

So we did it.

And the patio emerged.

And it mostly grows grass and weeds where the white stones should shine.

But this year though my surgery scar is palpable, with little lumps that make me hope for that newfangled thing where they just inject your scar and everything turns baby-skin smooth, I also feel like my chest won’t pop open.

So I moved the chiminea that had been on the front lawn—temporarily for years for my daughter’s pre-wedding celebration—down to that barn patio. I whacked the weeds and sprayed vinegar over them. And I thought wouldn’t it be great to set it up for Joan to join me too, and after she talks with her friends on Zoom we’ll do a little romantic chiminea thing down here with a fire.

To remind myself and show her the way I took a chair, a patio chair with red webbing, and turned it upside-down on the lawn halfway to the barn and this amazing new romantic patio. Then I finished microwaving my part of the leftovers for supper and went down to join Joan.

She was ON A DIFFERENT CHAIR!

“What? I set up a chair just for you.”

“What? ” She says. “What chair!”

“Right there, upside-down on the lawn,” I say, “that red-webbed chair.”

“What?”  she says. “That was for me? How was I supposed to know that was for me?”

“Um because why would a chair with red webbing be upside-down on the lawn other than because I love you?”

“I did have a little trouble understanding why that chair was upside-down on the lawn. I thought it was one more not-yet-completed goal of yours.”

“What!”

“What else would I think? Would you think a chair with red webbing was upside-down on the lawn because I love you?”

“No, I’d wonder why you didn’t finish the job. But that’s different.”

“Why?”

“Well because obviously I set up this whole evening for you, to love you and cherish you like you deserve. And now you’re like what is that chair doing there? Isn’t this a problem? Is our marriage over?”

“Um Michael, how was I supposed to know a chair with red webbing turned upside-down in the middle of the lawn was your love for me? Really?”

“Yes! That’s my love language! Why in the world would I turn a chair over in the middle of the lawn if my love for you wasn’t through sickness and in health until the end of time? Why? Why? Why?”

Joan gazes at me. “Really?”

“Really.”

So now she knows: You see a red-webbing chair turned upside-down in the middle of the lawn, come on, say my goodness what a wonderful husband you are, you are really and truly my sweetie pie. How could I ask for more? Your love language is all a spouse could ever wish for or imagine. Thank you thank you thank you Michael King.

Um. Really?

—Michael A. King is blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. The incident of the red-webbing chair has forced him to recognize that having a degree in rhetoric and communication does not guarantee love-language competence.