It happened recently that my granddaughter’s wooden backyard play set was blown over during a storm. My son sent me pictures of the damage. One neighbor had another neighbor’s trampoline firmly planted high in a tree. According to my son the play set was damaged beyond repair so he was making plans to buy another one. He sent me pictures of the replacement set and it was really nice and much bigger. He calls the new playground set The Taj Mahal…or just “The Taj.” It so happens that my granddaughter’s birthday is just around the corner so he took the dive and ordered “The Taj.”

I have a backyard play set similar to the one that just blew over so I have experience assembling one. It was one of the most difficult things I ever did. I remember when it was delivered to my house. For the most part it was a pallet of brown painted lumber and a five pound bag of hardware. I quickly learned that the assembly instructions were not written by anyone with even a hint of technical writing skill. I’m pretty sure that the person who wrote the instructions does not reside in North America. I bet whoever wrote them did it in their native language and then dropped it in their version of Google translator and BOOM…done.

I recently learned from my son that “The Taj” will be delivered on my granddaughter’s birthday which means I will be on hand to assist with the assembly process. It has been made clear to me by my wife that birthday celebrations are mandatory events and our attendance is required. Says who? I’m not a fan of driving further than my nearest grocery store so a five or six hour trip to my son’s house isn’t really something I look forward to. If I say such things out loud my affection for my son, his wife, granddaughter, and newly minted grandson are called into question. I think it’s a legitimate mind set to think that our attendance is not always required….or perhaps even wanted. I’ve been married thirty-nine years so I haven’t been married long enough to even attempt that conversation with my wife.

When my son calls I’m pretty sure he is driving to or from somewhere. He recently called and said he was going to a hardware store to buy some stakes and construction flagging. His plan was to stake and flag the area where “The Taj” was going to be constructed. It will be a monumental build so he wanted his wife to see and approve the site. I thought that showed wise foresight but I was curious as to why he wasn’t going to Lowe’s for stakes and flagging. He explained that the local hardware store was probably a bit more expensive but it was closer than Lowe’s and he could get there and back more quickly. I thought that was a reasonable trade off but I still would have gone to Lowe’s. He went on to tell me that the last play set he assembled he staked and flagged for his wife’s approval….but he still had to move it when it was almost done. That surprised me because she had the advantage of the stakes and flagging yet she still asked him to move it near it’s completion. He clarified by saying she didn’t ask for it to be moved she just said that she couldn’t see it as well as she would like. Which as anyone with marital experience knows is wife code for: “Please move it.”

Many of the conversations my son and I have are about interpreting the code. He wants us to collaborate in what he calls a recipe book. The idea is to take what wives say and translate it into something more understandable to husbands. The idea is appealing because there is a subtle below the surface dialogue going on between husbands and wives. In my view that is where the most important things are said without ever having been spoken. In the case of the moving play set, my daughter-in-law saw what it took for my son to assemble it. Yet when it was nearly done she realized the site was too far away for her to adequately see it when children were playing on it. After all the labor and frustration that went into erecting it, she just couldn’t bring herself to ask for it to be moved so she used code: “I can’t see it well.” Basic translation: “Move it.” Expert translation: “Show me you mean it when you say I love you.”

In the story of the play set that blew away the fact that my son moved it probably meant more to his wife than the fact that he built it to begin with.

Over the past several days I have been reinstalling vinyl fencing. Over years of time, six kids with questionable driving skills, and a fallen swimming pool made the replacement necessary. Since the weather was cold and wet, I understood that I would be the primary laborer for this job. That is just fine because I like working alone and I don’t care about the weather. During the installation I happened to walk through the garage and my wife was sweeping. I told her to leave it because I would sweep it later. She said no and she was okay with doing it. In an effort to help I asked her if she would like me to move the other car out of garage. Again she said no because she was only sweeping the side of the garage without a car. I simply said okay. But that seemed so odd to me. Who sweeps half of their garage? Walking away to tackle the next panel of fencing I thought maybe I should put the other car back into the garage to eliminate the necessity of sweeping entirely. That didn’t seem like a good thing to do because then my wife’s sweeping skills would be called into question so I went back to what I was doing. I realized later that I failed to hear and translate the code. When finding my wife sweeping the garage, a chore I typically do, I should have just moved the other car and took the broom.