Nine Important Lessons From What Is a WIFE

by Libby Alexander

Are you married? Getting married? Not going to get married, but feel like you’re married? Were you in a love triangle, but have decided to choose you and so are marrying yourself? This book is for you! It tells you what wife means. Here are nine lessons about wives and one about men.

1. Pack up your essence: “A wife is a girl whose dolls are wrapped in tissue and packed away…a fragile link with girlhood, so treasured and so forgotten.”

2. Practice using thee and thou: “A girl becomes a wife with her eyes wide open. She knows that the sweetest vows really mean, I promise thee to cook three meals a day for years and years; thee will I worry about…and talk to, even when thou art not listening.”

3. Fix and remodel things, feed people metal with lettuce garnish: “She can repair a toaster…bawl out a railroad, remodel last year’s coat…make supper for a guest out of two cans and a head of lettuce.”

4. Shape-shift shape-shift shape-shift: “When the going gets really tough…she can become a delicate flower, a siren, a lady wrestler, or a Mother Superior.”

5. Continue/start liking these things: “A wife likes…neighbors, furniture (provided it is moved sufficiently), cucumbers, soap…lettuce…tub baths, other people’s birthdays…”

6. Start/keep disliking these items: “She is cool toward…moths, mice, men drivers…fried foods, unwashed children.”

7. Man secret alert: “A man has a pocket…”

8. What to put in your tiny, tinier, and tiniest purses: “Her purse contains a little purse inside of which is a tiny purse… Into these, she puts…phone bill, six cleansing tissues…a broken bracelet, some material to be matched…a bandage, thread, and a piece of paper on which is written a lovely thought…”

9. Unpack (cry) and then repack the doll (cry, eat cans and lettuce): “As the years roll on… Time will soften her… many a hope and dream will be packed away tenderly with the doll.”

So obvious, but also helpful! Like you might want to consider some railroad bawling classes. And to make it easy for you to follow the book’s advice, here is your Wife Grocery List: lettuce, at least two cans, mothballs, tissue for your dolls, cleansing tissues, mouse traps, extra tissues for repacking the dolls when you’re softer, and more lettuce. Ask for the cucumbers on your registry!

Previously: What Is a Wife in the Wild.

Libby Alexander also runs a pop-up flea market in Chicago.