My nine Wives
by Keith Drury
I confess—I’ve had nine wives in my life so far. I know, it sounds shameful, but I must be quick to point out, I’ve loved them all. I still do. Let me tell you about each:
Wife #1 Satellite Sidekick
My first wife was a traditional wife—a “help-meet” of sorts. She cooked meals to suit my taste, decorated a comfortable nest for us to live in, made the bed every day and did all the dishes after every meal. Sometimes I even helped and when I did she effusively praised me. My first wife was sort of like a full time administrative assistant at home—she’d pre-read magazines for me, did all the shopping, and generally focused her life on making my life more comfortable and happy. She was a college drop out. In fact she dropped out of college to put me through college and seminary. Sometimes we had disagreements but after some arguing she usually admitted she was in the wrong and I gracefully hugged her and forgave her. My first wife even adopted my own hobbies as her own. She learned to hike and camp and went along with me in 1972 to hike a thousand miles on the Appalachian Trail in 1972. She was a “good deal” for me. A “low maintenance” woman that produced mostly benefits for me—a “Tonto” to my lone ranger role. I loved my first wife a lot—she made my life easier.
Wife #2 Secretary
My second wife was a secretary. She devotedly served a dean of a nearby college so she had more outlets than just serving me like my first wife did. However, I still had a great deal—after she came home from work she still did almost all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, dishes and house cleaning. I handled the more weighty matters like mowing the grass (by hiring a neighborhood kid), fixing the roof (mostly by examining it) and worrying about the future of civilization. I felt like I was being quite generous in sharing her with her daytime boss, but it was a fair trade—since she brought home a paycheck to help us buy important things like backpacking equipment, ten speed bicycles and kites. I loved my second wife too—I can remember picking her up from the office in my little VW beetle…watching her come down those steps. She would always smile at me and plant a kiss on my lips as soon as she got in the car. She was busier than my first wife, but I loved her too.
Wife #3 Stay-at-home mom
My third wife did not work outside the home—she stayed home raising our kids and managing our home. She taught our sons Bible stories. Every day or two she assigned me to read the bedtime story. I was often too tired and volunteered to do it the following night, to which she would reply “You’ll do just fine tonight—here’s the book.” In fact, I became a fairly good dad mostly because of my third wife. She assigned me the jobs “good dads” do. This woman was a managing marvel. She made lists for everything, got competitive bids for every house repair, and spent half her time figuring out how to save money on everything from sneakers to groceries. She discovered the local meat packer got rid of all the unclaimed venison once a year, so she bought 20-25 deer each year and our family ate deer meat at every meal for more than five years. On top of all this home-keeping, my third wife decided to go back to college and she got her bachelor’s degree—a degree she had given up to get married. She earned a degree in business management—because she thought she liked managing people (at that time she mostly managed our two sons and several pets). Thus my third wife started out as a stay-at-home mom talking with my kids about Big Bird and the latest drama on Mister Rogers, then wound up talking about personnel policies, strategic planning and accounting procedures. I could see I wasn’t going to be able to keep this wife very long. I didn’t.
Wife #4 Itinerant Speaker
My fourth wife traveled and spoke a lot. This marriage was a complicated one—since I too traveled and spoke during that period of my life. We had to work out “covering the kids” and competing engagements so we had to do lots of trade-offs. Sometimes her schedule would prevail and I’d stay home. At other times my schedule would win and she’d go back to being a stay-at-home mom for a while. This wife is the one who founded an organization for the “wives” of ministers called “Yokemates.” She held conferences in a variety of denominations and maintained a monthly newsletter and wrote articles for national magazines. Occasionally the two of us would be invited to speak at a conference or retreat together. This seemed nice on the surface. However it actually was more difficult since neither of us were with our kids during the retreat and thus we had to pay a sitter. And, of course the sponsors of such events usually split the normal honorarium-for-one between the two of us as if they were benefiting us to “bring along your spouse” so by the time we paid the sitter we wound up actually subsiding the hosts in have us. I loved wife #4 but increasingly came to respect her separateness form me—more of a parallel path. I remember once slipping into the back of a conference where she was speaking without her knowing it and I watched her behind the lectern in front of hundreds of people. It was a funny feeling I had that day—something like love but different in some way. I admired her, felt proud of her, looked up to her.
Wife #5 Dog Breeder
Through a series of events and experiences I need not mention here, I wound up in a marriage to my fifth wife—a dog breeder. This wife was also a stay-at-home person, but not a stay-at-home “mom.” Well, she was a mom, but my two sons didn’t really need her much except for her to faithfully buy eight bushels of cereal and sixty gallons of milk a week—they were teenagers. But she was needed. My own mother needed here—she had come to live with us and was declining in health. I was traveling often so wife #5 spent lots of time caring for my her ailing mother. Stuck at home, this wife started a business of breeding Golden Retrievers on the side that ultimately turned it into a significant business that became no longer “on the side.” This wife was amazing with money—not only could she save money like my third wife, but this one knew how to “spend money to make money.” Everything she touched prospered. While my fifth marriage was the most stressful, I was constantly amazed at this wife’s business acumen. I love her still.
Wife #6 Graduate Student
My sixth wife was a grad student. First, she found out she could get a Master’s degree in business in evening classes so I covered the home that evening while she earned her Master’s. But the part of this marriage I remember best is the period while she was earning her PhD and writing her dissertation. What a lady! This gal had a full time academic administration job as a dean of a University program over 7000 students. Yet after a grueling day she’d go to work finishing her PhD dissertation every evening (and all weekends except for a "date night” we snatched away each Friday). For more than three years she put in an additional 20 hours a week after her day job was done. This marriage was yet another adjustment for me. Here was a driven lady ten times more focused than any of my first five wives and was even more focused than I had even been—which surprised me. The years during her PhD were one incredible ride! In this marriage we didn’t have much time for each other so we spent it in highly leveraged dates or dinners. She’d leave her office at five and we’d grab a quick bite of fast food for 30 minutes before she went for the rest of the evening to study and write. When she got home I was often already asleep. She worked all day Saturday, and many Sunday afternoons as well. This was a totally different marriage than any I’d had before. In a way it was my turn to become the house-husband, so I did all the housework and cared for household details while she studied. (I did, however insist that if I cleaned the house it would get cleaned only after it degraded down to my standards, not hers—to which she agreed.) This marriage was good for me. Sometimes I would get a glimpse of what my first and second wives did in serving me and I came to love them all the more for it. But I really was wowed by this grad student—she simply swept me off my feet. She seemed younger in a way than any of my former wives. Perhaps it was the learning, or the personal growth, or the determination, or something else, but as an older man it was exhilarating to have this younger woman grad student as wife #6—what a great marriage, and totally different than my former marriages.
Wife #7 Academic Dean Ph.D.
This wife received her PhD in her 50’s and became academic Dean of the adult program where she led the academic life of a huge student body that was then approaching 10,000 students. This was a high-powered academic administrator type wife who told a dozen other PhD’s where to go and what to do. She was a respected leader and developed the men and women under her leadership. She went to meetings all day and was responsible for a budget well over ten million dollars. She delivered scholarly papers at national conferences and was a measured person known for her wisdom. This lady was one fine specimen of a leader and I was lucky to have landed her—she was a “good boss” at work but was never bossy at home. She answered hundreds of emails a day and made scores of decisions. While this wife was not a backpacker like wife #1 was, she’s was supportive of my own hiking habit and always sent me brownies to the post offices along the way on the trailsI hiked each summer (though she did not discover for several years that I don’t actually like brownies :-). She was “not into cooking” like some of my earlier wives, so we went out to eat a lot or I cooked meals. In this marriage I was more of a “traditional wife” than any of my other marriages. I did most of the household chores. This wife had her laptop hooked up to the Internet even when we drove to Florida because she had to make high-powered decisions about academic life even when we were on vacation. This marriage was good for me even though it eventually ended when I got the next wife.
Wife #8 Doctoral Professor
My next wife was a faculty member in my University where she taught doctoral students “organizational leadership.” She was a nice change of pace after the high-impact administrator of #7 wife. We were two empty nest college professors snuggling and chatting together a lot. We had similar work schedules and did similar things. She was always d helping students with their dissertations as their advisor. She was the most avid reader and researcher of all my wives. She had an incurable love of knowledge and understanding of leadership. When this wife was just ten years old she used to ride a city bus all alone every Saturday to downtown Toledo where she’d spend all day at the library reading books. She was a scholar-wife and we talk a lot about heady things and she makes me mute the TV for such discussions. I was really head over heels in love with her and thought I’d spend the rest of my life with her or at least I’d not get a new wife until I retired.
Wife #9 Retired lady
The wife I am now living with wife #9. She is a calm, always-smiling classy lady. Gentle and kind she is respected by others like she is some sort of royalty or something. We are together far more than I’ve experienced with any other wife so there are far more opportunities to get on each others nerves. Yet every time we have a disagreement or conflict we seem to have the time to calm down and work it out. We do lots of things together and both have the same hobby—cycling outdoors. We live in Florida and go to Indiana all summer where our sons and their families live. Our marriage is soft and sweet and I did not know how much you can love an old woman and how beautiful they are to you once you become an old man. It is like we are on a perpetual honeymoon together now and I can say without a doubt that my ninth wife is the best I ever had!
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Of course those who know me personally know that I’m talking about the same woman here. I have never had a divorce and am not guilty of bigamy. These nine wives are all the same woman, the love of my life for well over fifty years, Sharon Bailey Drury.
So when my students used to come in for advice and actually show me a list of “what I want in my spouse” I’d just laugh. Marriage isn’t about getting a certain kind of person—it is about living the rest of your life and changing together. Marriage is not a destination—its a road trip. The question is who to take the trip with.
Keith Drury. 2004 (revised each time I got a new wife after that)