Like Chocolate For Water

In what seems like another life – a life lived in Chicago; a life without children – Beth and I inherited a pull-out couch. The one caveat was that it basically got dropped off in our back yard. It was up to Beth and me to get it up the narrow, winding, and steep back stairs of our Chicago bungalow two-flat.

It’s long enough past now that I don’t recall why we didn’t call anyone else in to help, but the two of us decided to give it a go. Getting it through the ground floor door was the first trick, and left us both tired and frustrated. Now we had to try to get the couch up a flight-and-a-half of stairs that took five turns.

For whatever reason, I had ended up on the inside and Beth on the outside. This left me pulling from the top of the couch and Beth lifting from the bottom. And we made it almost all the way up, around four of the five turns, before we came to a stale mate with couch wedged between the railing and the back wall. The couch wasn’t moving and neither were we.

We sat and began to discuss how we were going to get the couch back down and out, or whether we would just let it sit there for the night and try again tomorrow. After resting for a bit, we decided to give it one last try. We both took our positions and began to assert ourselves against the immovable object. After a few moments of struggle, I heard a groan of exertion emit from below the couch – the kind of roar Superman gives before hurling a nuclear warhead into outer space – and the couch came literally flying up the stairs at me.

From that moment on I’ve jokingly called my wife She-Ra, especially when I've needed her to help me move something around the house. I now know she hides unimaginable strength behind that fair façade and it often shows itself in surprising ways. I saw it again this summer when Beth ran the fundraising garage sale for our adoption. An amazing amount of people donated stuff, many of our friends and family spent hours helping with the sale and watching our kids, but from sun up to sun down and through weeks of preparation and days of execution, I watched my wife pull up her boot straps to sort and then sell an amount of items that would have been overwhelming to any mere mortal.

And then this week, when every night I came home to the smell of desserts baking in the oven and a mess of mixing bowls, baking stones, flour, sugar all over the kitchen, I knew She-Ra was at it again. Beth had agreed to provide desserts for a fundraiser on Saturday. And what I need to point out is that this was Holiday Pops week for me, so I was essentially useless and she had three kids at her ankles all day, every day. In spite of this she baked over 200 desserts, all to raise money for charity: water.

I once teased Beth that her spiritual gift was baking. She acted indignant, but I think she secretly took pleasure in the idea. Like Babette’s feast or Vianne’s chocolates, I think Beth believes in her heart she could change the world with the perfect ginger snap. So on Saturday night, between some time spent setting up for my concert and then returning for the concert that night, I got to help her carry six trays of desserts to the Red Stone Room in downtown Davenport for Water4Christmas' “Wine to Water” fundraiser.

As an aside, don’t take my amazement with my wife as the least slight to the dozens of people who made this week-long drive to raise money in the Quad Cities to dig wells on the other side of the the globe a success. Beth was just one pair of boots on the ground in this army of philanthropists. (She would tell you she was just the lowliest of foot soldiers.)  Jody, Leslie, and Tesi are the only three generals I can name, although I'm sure there are more stars in the crowd that I'm yet to meet, and these three women are each doubtless She-Ras in their own right. I also understand our friend Cathy of Miss Effie’s Country Flowers brought some absolutely lovely desserts Saturday night. Water4Christmas, based in Muscatine, has raised over $120,000 this year and is approaching $30,000 just this week. All of that money will go to charity: water and fund water wells and sanitation facilities for something like 30 impoverished communities around the world; giving clean, healthy drinking water to thousands of people who need it to survive. Keep up the amazing work. (To find out more about charity: water, I recommend starting with this inspiring video.)

I was unfortunately unable to attend the fundraiser because I had to be at the Holiday Pops concert, but reports are that Wine to Water was well attended and that it successfully raised $11,000. As I set down the last tray of Texas sheet cake and rushed out the door towards the i wireless Center, I left behind me Beth in her long black dress (the one I affectionately call “Maid Marian”), the stretch boots she inherited from Paige, and with an Ethiopian scarf flying from her neck like a superhero’s cape arranging the dessert table. The princess of power was in her uniform and in her element, saving the world one chocolate-chip cookie at a time.

Women of the future
Hold the big revelations
…
Hey sexy boots...
Get on your boots, yeah
…
You don’t know how beautiful
You don’t know how beautiful you are
You don’t know, and you don’t get it, do you?
You don’t know how beautiful you are