I saw him go in and close the door. I wondered what he was doing in there. A couple of minutes later he emerges from his telephone booth in his miracle working hero outfit. Very often I don’t see him go in or come out, I just find him using his powers for good rather than evil. There is no cape or tights – more like dirty holey blue jeans and a ratty shirt. No swooning involved. To complete the outfit he also dons his work gloves and his old hikers then quietly unobtrusively sets about to save our world – well at least our cars, our home, our yard, and our kids. His telephone booth is, in fact, the deep freeze/furnace room. All I know is when he emerges in this outfit there is going to be some serious super hero activities taking place.
He saved us from the skunk that took up residence under our shed, even guarding the back yard in the wee hours of the morning. Pepe le Pew is history. Once he replaced a motor in Andrew’s car – how did he know how to do that? After hours and hours of basically living (and eating) in the garage into the wee hours of the morning I heard that motor start up and the car being driven down the back alley. Houston – we have lift off. Another time he built us a deck and backyard all with supplies he found on kijiji. It was, and still is, amazing. Even the neighbors stood by agog. On another occasion he found out how to take the oven door apart and clean the glass from the inside and managed to put it back together again with no spare parts leftover. Who attempts that?
One Christmas he donned his winter hero suit and drove the 12 hours to Vancouver on a snowy Saturday to pick up our adult children, pack them up (one was moving back home) and drove them safely back through a sketchy storm on the Coquihalla the very next day so they could be home for Christmas. Our fridge was making a strange sound – rather like we were living on the YYC tarmack where airplanes take off every 10 minutes or so. He took that 7 year old fridge apart and figured out the problem and fixed it. Again, no parts leftover. He rotates and changes our tires and changes the oil on all 4 cars. He keeps them running. He fixes the brakes and the broken fenders. He washes them and gets us the best deals on insurance. He orders part from China and pays pennies for them with free shipping. I casually mentioned I wanted to remodel our kitchen island and by the end of that month I had a new island – plumbing and electrical all done by my own personal super hero. He stopped and changed a tire for a young girl on highway 22X last weekend. He didn’t have time to come home and get his superhero outfit but I am sure that it looked like he was wearing it to that lost 18 year old girl. He actually helps little old ladies cross the street.
He has acquired very McIver-like skills over the years. Our garage door wasn’t opening and my car was trapped inside. He fashioned a contraption out of cardboard, some tin foil and a drinking straw and the dang door is working great. My mom keeps asking what that piece of garbage hanging from the garage roof is and I keep telling her – its what keeps our garage door working. The stone tiles were beginning to crack off our fireplace. He found a unique, easy and inexpensive way to fix that too and it’s virtually invisible. I was suffering from bursitis a few years ago and couldn’t sit or lay on my hip so I started going to his office for treatments (he’s actually a chiropractor by trade) and the pain went away and hasn’t come back since. He buys items on kijiji, at Value Village or Cash converters and then turns around and sells them on Kijiji and makes money. He is the quintessential Proverbs 31 husband. Our friends think he is a Doctor but really he makes most of his living as a junk curber. He even babysat our daughters’ rose bushes over the winter – making them warm nests so they wouldn’t freeze (while she lived in Vancouver for a term) and they blossomed profusely the next summer.
He designed and built the most amazing shed in our backyard when we moved into our new home 7 years ago. We call it the Barn because well…it looks like a barn. He used the old siding off of our new house. The siding the insurance company was going to toss after they replaced the North side of the house after a summer of hail storms. He used the deck he tore down (the one the builders put in) as a floor for the shed (because he had bought a composite deck off of kijiji). He used an old vintage window that I had had laying around for years. He even made little wooden flower planters on the side, 1/2 way up for me to plant petunias and geraniums. A lot of my friends and acquaintances gush over my creativity. The fact is, my super hero husband is just as creative only in different ways.
How does he do all these things? How does he even know how? What is his motivation? Inquiring minds want to know. He’s a Saskatchewan farm boy. Need I say more? Im buying that man a cape. He’d probably look pretty cute in tights too (but you’ll never know).
The Red Plaid Apron 