Like a spoilt, disgruntled child he drove home, grumbling to himself the entire way. Her words were still fresh in his mind like the gnawing taunts they had grown to become over the years.

‘I’m a grown man, for God’s sake’ he moaned to the dark, silent road that blurred past his car window.

His opinion of his wife hadn’t always been this indignant. Time, that viciously unmerciful archetype of marriage, had taken its naturally stereotypical toll, regressing her presence and personality to something more like a vague hindrance than a blessing to his life.

‘Take out the trash…get off the couch and help me…all you care about is sports…I need eggs…I need bread…I need potatoes…I need…I need…I need...’

All her nagging requests bustled through his mind like non-stop N1 traffic. What happened to the longing stares and unsolicited loving remarks about his looks and smile that used to make her day?

Once the money had been earned and the life had been built all the chemistry between them had been forfeited for familiarity and mundane monotony. Now he felt more like an on-call handyman than a soul mate.

Beside him the packets of vegetables and dinner groceries lightly shuffled and crackled against the plush leather of his executive saloon.

‘She won’t even need any of those things for at least another hour,’ he thought bitterly.

Still her neurotic instincts had deemed their early purchase to be far more important than the big game. What made her groceries more important than his well earned ‘couch time’? If she made an effort and took the time to try and understand his football fixation, maybe she would then understand the love that fuelled his passion for the beautiful game.

Youth and carefree infatuation had passed so swiftly, just a short lived memory now. Responsibilities of adulthood had brought an abrupt end to the miraculous exuberance that had formed a constant, seemingly unending trait of their bond of once young lovers.

‘And they lived happily ever after…’

Fairytales were so deceptively fulfilling, ignoring the bumps along the way to promote the illusion of a perfectly straight and smooth road. He scoffed at the thought of the wishful fantasies that fuelled their not so innocuous creation. Married life was like looks, withering more and more with every year that passed until you forgot that beauty had once ever resided there at all.   

The road twisted and curved with his rabid thoughts as their house came into view just around the corner. With a sigh he turned into the driveway. Just about to use his remote and disengage the electronic gate, he noticed something through the lounge window and stopped to ponderously observe the clarifying scene instead.

Under the sharply illuminating lounge light he saw her face. Like a slap of ice cold it brought a reminiscent grin to his face, one that blurred away the resentment with an epiphany of rediscovered gratitude. With requited modesty he watched her jump and play with their four year old daughter, the most flawless of smiles etched sincerely into both their faces.

The same strawberry blonde hair, the same inebriating blue eyes and delicately beautiful features; together mother and daughter were like a living advertisement for the succession of beautiful genes. Years of unfounded, self gratifying bitterness were replaced by a sublime renaissance of love and admiration.

All it took was an instant of seeing them together to illicit flashbacks of the first day they met, their first kiss, the first time they said ‘I love you’, the day they wed and the day that same bundle of joy that stared longingly into her mother’s eyes first came into this world.

He could never truly erase those moments from his life; only briefly take them for granted as he let the simpler, more present joys of life distort his perception.

No feeling could rival the gifts in life she had given him, the smiles, the happiness, the support, the friendship, the loving affection, the brutal honesty, the companionship and, most importantly, the insatiably precious legacy she had unselfishly carried for nine months for him to unconditionally love for all his life.

No painting could capture this perfection, no colour could promote this dazzling hue and no impression could ever justify this reality.

With a final smile to himself he opened the gate and drove in, anxious to be with her after so many years of forgetting why he ever wanted to in the first place…