It’s Sunday morning after Thanksgiving. The house is quiet in the absence of the bustle that came through here a couple of days ago. The dried play-doh particles have been vacuumed up. The toys have been put away. The pots and pans and casserole dishes are all nestled back inside the cupboard.

I am so thankful for family. The food was good. The love and laughter was better.

It looks like a blustery winter day outside. The grey clouds are dark. The wind is carrying them across the lake at a brisk pace. The near naked treetops are shivering, which makes me grateful for the blanket spread across my legs and feet.

I am contemplating life. This is what old men do at dawn. Comfy flannel pants. A long sleeved thermal shirt. A hot cup of coffee held between both hands. The slurps are slow and satisfying.

Marion comes to sit beside me. “What you thinking about?”

I’m never sure how to answer this question. Whatever goes through my head doesn’t stay long enough to qualify as a consolidated train of thought. The neurons in my brain rattle around like a pinball. I’m thinking about everything and nothing at the same time. No one subject remains in focus for very long.

“The weather,” I answer. “It looks like it’s gonna be a nasty day. The radar shows we’ve got some heavy rain moving in by 8am.”

I was not ready for the response I got. I expected her to say something like “good day to stay inside,” or “you gonna share that blanket or keep it to yourself.”

She went in a direction I did not anticipate.

“I need to go clean my gutter on the front corner of the house.”

I felt pulled in a couple of different directions at this proposal. For one thing, I am warm, content, and enjoying a good cup of coffee. Going outside was not one of the things I was thinking about.

Secondly, I learned from my dad that gutter cleaning falls into the realm of male responsibility. And even though I am at her house on this fine winter morning, and the gutters here are technically “her gutters,” my sense of obligation makes me uncomfortable with the prospect of ignoring her suggestion.

“What?”

“The last time it rained, water poured over the front of my gutter on the corner. The downspout must be stopped up. I need to clear it before the rain gets here.”

This is a Sunday morning. I’ve already shaved and showered. She just finished blow drying her hair. We were in the middle of relaxing before getting dressed to head off to church. And if I had said nothing about the weather, we might have remained under our blanket.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“No. You finish your coffee. I’ll take care of it.”

I am married to a very independent woman. She is glad to have me in her world, but she doesn’t need me in her world. She’s been cleaning her own gutters for a long time, and once she decides to do something, she honestly doesn’t care if I help or not.

She sets her coffee cup down and gets up off the couch. She grabs her jacket off the hook in the kitchen, slips on a pair of shoes from the laundry room, and she’s out the door before I can hardly move.

By the time I zip up my jacket and get outside, she’s already headed for the far side of the garage where she keeps her ladders. The ground is wet from an early shower, though it’s not raining now. The wind is howling.

I’m not far behind her.

“Let me get the ladder for you.”

But I’m too late to help. She grabs up the 20 foot extension ladder and walks toward me. She winks and smiles as she saunters by me, giving me the look of sheer independent determination. All I can do is step out of her way.

“I’ve got this,” she says.

I have given up my man-card a thousand times over the last two-and-a-half years. Some of it has been painful because I am stubborn. For the last 50 years I have been used to “taking care of things” that the man is supposed to take care of in a relationship.

Today, I am the assistant. I help her get the ladder set up against the gutter. I don’t bother to offer to go up the ladder because I know she doesn’t need me to do that. My role is simply to hold the ladder.

We’re both wearing flannel pajama pants and bedroom shoes. She’s got on an insulated jean jacket. I’ve got my camo hoody zipped up to my neck. The ladder is wet.

“Watch your step,” I say as she ascends toward the cold, grey sky.

Clumps of pine straw and leaves are falling around me. I’m looking down to keep the debris out of my eyes.

“How’s it look up there?”

“It’s not that bad. Just enough in the corner to keep the water from getting to the downspout.”

She comes down and we move the ladder to the other side of the corner. Up she goes. The wind is blowing up my skirt like we’re standing on deck out in the Bering Sea.

Soon enough she comes down and announces that we’re done for now. She instructs me to lay the ladder down, leaning it against the shrubs across the front of the porch.

“I’ll get the rest done later this week,” she says.

This kind of fierce independence might unravel some men. Not me. I actually admire her spunk, even when it interrupts my morning coffee. I admire it because it makes us partners. We do yard work together. We work in the shop together. We put up ceiling fans together. We tote deer stands into the woods together.

Sometimes we even cook together, but I know my limitations and generally try to stay out of her way.

Entering a marriage at our age has been a significant adjustment for both of us, but for me, learning to accept and even celebrate her independence has been the most eye-opening experience of them all. I respect her spirit and wouldn’t want her to be any other way.

We’re back inside the house where it’s warm. She pours some fresh coffee, and we settle back on the couch. We’ve got a few minutes before we need to get ready to leave.

“You’re something, you know that?”

She knows exactly what I’m saying. There ain’t another woman in a hundred miles of here who is gonna go outside in the cold and drizzle on a Sunday morning to clean out a gutter. And no self-respecting husband is gonna stay inside drinking coffee while she does it.

“What are you talking about?” she asks.

I was going to say something about being hard-headed and driven; something about never slowing down to enjoy the quiet moments in life. But I just gave her the look.

“Hey. Don’t blame me,” she says. “You prayed for an independent woman.”

And I’m glad I did.