Lost in Translation
My husband poked his fork in the lone casserole gracing the table. "How about a few side items with dinner sometime?"
His words seemed harmless. Combine a couple of words and a cute face, and you have a simple request from your adoring husband of six months, right?
Wrong. Because what I did was blend that simple request about "dinner" with the time I spent grocery shopping and my "I don't like cooking in the first place" feelings. In the end, what I heard was "You're not much of a cook. What goofball cooks a casserole and doesn't have any side dishes?"
My face grew hot while the space across the table chilled.
A few weeks later I bought a new dress and couldn't wait to show Dennis. I twirled around, modeling the cute stitching on the hem. "What do you think?"
"Nice. Not my favorite color on you, but it's nice." Dennis sat on the couch, arms stretched comfortably across the back, legs crossed, obviously unaware of the danger he was in.
My face fell. "Nice? You think this dress is nice? I can't believe you would say that to me!"
I turned around, stomped to our bedroom, slammed the door, and jerked that nice dress off my body.
Being brave, Dennis came to check on me. "What happened?"
My jaw dropped. "You just told me you think I'm fat, and you want to know what happened?"
"What are you talking about?" Dennis sputtered. "I just told you I thought your dress was nice! I never said anything about you being fat!"
Over time, more miscommunications ensued. One disagreement concerned the actual time lapse (38 minutes) after my use of the phrase "just a minute" when Dennis was ready to leave a party.
"We need to talk," Dennis informed me when we got home.
"I hate that word: talk."
"Why?"
"It means you're mad at me."
"That's our problem. We both speak English, but we use different dictionaries."
"What are you talking about?"
"What does the word 'dinner' mean to you? Say whatever comes to mind."
I took a deep breath. "Food. Cooking. Guilty."
"Guilty? Why?"
"I don't like to cook, but I want to be a good wife, so I feel guilty that I don't like to cook, but you want side dishes and I don't want to cook them."
Dennis grinned. "To me, 'dinner' means full stomach, family time, and yes-side dishes. What do you think when I say 'nice', as in 'nice dress'?"
I frowned. "I think 'Liar, liar, pants on fire!'"
Dennis laughed. "How did you come up with that?"
"Because 'nice' is what you say when you can't give a legitimate compliment."
"To me, 'nice' means good, fine, OK."
We spent the next hour pinpointing other troublesome definitions. I must have looked worried.
Dennis reached for my hand. "I'm not asking you to ditch your definitions and adopt mine. The Bible says that when a man and woman marry, they become one. This is our chance to decide together which words and which definitions go in the Dennis-Heather dictionary."
The following Saturday, we got a chance to practice our new plan.
I felt restless as we sat and watched TV. At commercial break, I said, "Dennis, I missed you today."
Dennis turned questioning eyes my way. "What do you mean? We've been together all day."
I mentally flipped through the scenes of our day: grocery shopping, laundry, a little yard work and now a ball game on TV. "We spent the day together, but we didn't spend time together."
Dennis returned my explanation with a baffled look.
I grabbed Dennis' hand and grinned. "Honey, tell me what 'spending time together' means to you."
"Oh, I get it," Dennis said, smiling. "To me 'spending time together' means doing things together even if we aren't talking. I guess it doesn't mean that to you, does it?"
I shook my head. "Don't get me wrong. I like that, too. But when I say I miss you or that I want to spend time together, I mean I want us to share what's on our minds without any distractions."
The next morning, we got up early, made a pot of coffee, and talked for half an hour with no interruptions. With few exceptions, every morning since then begins with coffee and a chat. It's my favorite part of the day.
We've been married for 34 years now, and we're still compiling our dictionary. We know exactly what "spending time together," "just a minute," "dinner," and "nice'" mean. It took time, dogged determination, willingness to set aside assumptions and preconceived ideas, and the willingness to ask questions and to give honest answers. Our vocabulary and our marriage are much richer for it now.
But I still don't like to cook.
Heather Trent Beers writes from her farm in Missouri, where she and her husband enjoy watching their chickens and the sunsets. Heather's work has been published in Focus on the Family, local lifestyle magazines, and in Guideposts compilation books. By writing, she hopes she can fulfill her wish of showing people how much God loves them.
