This morning, I made one of our “what don’t I do around here?” jokes to The Husband. Yeah…I think we might have to place an embargo on those. Turns out that being married, owning a house, and raising a kid require myriad responsibilities from each of the people involved, and tensions can especially run high during a week when the washing machine is leaking, there’s water damage to the walls, the air conditioner is threatening to shut down, and The Kid has buckets of snot leaking from his nose. We’re all full-time employees around here.

So, as I sit in our lovely sunroom on one of my two days per week off while TH toils away under fluorescent lighting, I think about what he does for me. What men do, in general, for those they love. I glance periodically at the house next door while I consider this topic. Yesterday, I took TK with me to get the mail and saw the She half of our neighbor couple standing in their front yard, staring ahead. My heart skipped a beat because her husband had told us that she occasionally tries to wander off. Would I have to return her home? Within seconds, her husband appeared behind her and placed an arm around her. They saw me and we approached each other, Husband/Wife and Mom/Baby, and I could tell that Wife was a little lost as to who we were. I wondered how many lucid moments she has these days, how many lucid moments any of us have left. Husband gently led her back to their house, a picture of sacrificial love.

TH, like most men, is adept at orienting love with action. He looks for ways to make my life easier: setting out my coffee cup, arranging appointments with the repairman when he will be home because he knows I don’t like people, offering to get takeout when I’ve had a rough day at work. He supports and believes in me in countless other ways that remain between us. And just a few minutes ago, when I sat down on the couch and found myself surrounded by last night’s dinner crumbs, he was on the case with the Shark within seconds. Now that’s love.

In our basement sits a TV that will soon be replaced, if TH’s Man Cave/Cool Basement project comes to fruition. But I’ll have a hard time letting go of that old Panasonic, because of the story behind it: when I was in dental school and moving into my first post-college apartment sans roommate, The Dad came up to help me relocate from one building to another. He asked where my TV was and I told him that my roommate–the one abandoning me by getting married–owned it and was taking it with her. At some point I had to leave and he finished unloading my stuff while I was gone. When I returned, he had left a brand-new television in my living room. This may seem unremarkable–unless you know The Dad and his aversion to spending money. For him, it was nothing short of sacrificial love. Like the time in college when I came home for a visit and we got into an argument, each of us stomping away in fumes. (This was before I realized that sometimes two people disagree because they’re more alike than they are different.) A couple of hours later, I was preparing to head back to school and I asked The Mom where he was so I could give a begrudging goodbye. She pointed me to the window, and I looked out to see The Dad checking my tires for air. And just last month, when they kept TK for a weekend, The Mom made sure to let me know (because he didn’t) that The Dad had swept out our porch and garage. (She, it should be mentioned, scrubbed our toilets and did our laundry. Gems, the both of them.)

We women know how to do feelings: how to talk about them and overanalyze them and correctly identify them. We excel at community and relationships. The men in our lives, though–bless their hearts–they aren’t so good at mind-reading as we’d like. They don’t always call often or quickly enough. But when they get it right…man, do they ever. A few weeks ago, a package arrived at my front door. I opened it to find the most perfect-for-me book inside, a gift from a man who has provided me style tips, witty banter, sporadic communication…and lifelong friendship. I think about him and all the other men in my life as I watch The Kid grab his own package and yell from his stroller and throw things around, Y chromosome fully on display. How thankful I am for my boy. I can’t wait to watch him become a man.