Don't sweat the small stuff. Like children, for example.

My husband and I began dating thirty-six years ago,  August 10, 1973.  He was a blind date.  He still is blind, in many ways, as I like to tell him.  We dated for ten years.  Of course, we got mad a few times and took a year or so off  here and there.  

When we began dating, he was twenty-eight and headed to law school.  I was eighteen, a sophomore in college, and called to teach the handicapped.  As I also like to tell him, back then, he had money, muscles, hair and a Corvette.  What happened?  I ask.  'You', he says.  Doesn't even smile when he says it, either.

He is funny, smart, mostly kind, and loves me, the latter being something that isn't as easy as it might sound.  See, I like my way.  And I like his way my way.  He sometimes has a problem with that.  Inflexible, I say.  Independent, he says.  Don't ever try that, I counter.

But, alas, he is independent.  Often more than I care for.  

Like when he decided to take the three kids and our Beagle and two nine week old Chihuahuas camping.  I was teaching a shooting class that weekend and would be on the range ten hours each day. The kids were 7, 9 and 11.  They hadn't even made it to the mountains when I got a call that the Chihuahua baby, Caliente, had eaten her weight in chocolate bars.  What to do?  I called the vet and called George back.  Not long after, I got another call.  Finally reaching the camp site, the Chihuahua Gordita had fallen into a swift snow-fed stream.  They saved her, but what should they do?  Oh, and, how do you get skunk smell off of a Beagle before bedtime?  Come home, I said.  We'll be fine, he said.  

Or when I called home from a shooting competition in Florida.  My husband assured me all was well.  Then, my eldest, the fifteen year old, got on the phone. ' My brother broke his thumb at soccer practice.'  'What?!'  'Yeah, it was all crooked and blue and hurting, and I said 'Dad, that thumb is broken' and he was like 'No way' and I said 'Yes it is'  and Dad said he'd have you look at it when you got home, and I said 'Take him to the hospital now or I'll drive him.'  So, he did, and guess what?  It's broken.  Cool, huh?'

So, to avoid further, uhh, events,  we have trained or arranged training for our kids in outdoor survival, advanced medical treatment, operating emergency vehicles, orienteering, mountain climbing, scuba diving, edible plants, animal first aid, shooting, martial arts and the Spanish language.  Whew!  All to protect them from their father who, contrary to what it sounds like, is one of the most competent outdoorsman alive.  He's just, well independent.