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It may be just as well. Catherine may be disappointed to learn that her fool of a husband spent $8.99 on a card. You may think I’m kidding, but she is pretty pragmatic, even when we aren’t putting three kids through college. A seasonal example of her pragmatism: She dislikes flower bouquets. When I tell other people that, they’ll try to debate me because they believe the notion that, say it with me now, every woman loves flowers. But Catherine is pretty truthful. That’s one of the things I love about her, even if the truth sometimes cuts to the bone — and by “the bone,� I mean “my emotionally immature bones.�

So rather than buy bouquets of doomed flowers, I do things like buy overpriced Mother’s Day cards with prefabricated sentiments. To be fair, I didn’t look at the price before I bought this year’s card. (All due apologies to the Safeway employee guarding self-checkout who had to listen to me go through the denial-to-acceptance process over the course of half a minute).

I at least had the forethought to black out the price on the back of the card before I mailed it, but Catherine reads this column, so, oops. (Hi, honey! Guess I should’ve bought the card sooner, and returned it, and then made a card by hand and put in the mail before Wednesday.)

Making a life

Catherine and I met in ‘93, when she was 21 and I was 25, at summer jobs we’d each taken cleaning hotel rooms in Healy, Alaska, at the entrance of Denali National Park. She’d arrived a couple of days before I had and was already cleaning. When the woman training me had me strip linens from Catherine’s rooms, I found a dollar tip that had been left behind. When Catherine and I were introduced, I said something along the lines of “This is yours� and gave her the dollar.

She was impressed, I later learned, because, to her thinking, anyone else would’ve pocketed it.

I took a shine because you could never disappoint someone so easily impressed by simply doing the right thing.

Which would be a great arrangement if the right thing were always easy to know and do.

We had the same days off, and so we hiked, camped, fell in love, shared a tent, got married in 1996, shared a home. We had our first daughter, Caroline, in 2000, and her twin sisters, Lillian (Lilly) and Lucia (Lucy), in 2002.

As our years together went on, doing the right things in life, and as a parent, never seemed as simple as giving a dollar to the person who deserved it. And in those tough times, nine times out of nine, Catherine’s heart, character and brain outdistanced mine. Yes, yes, call me a simp or whatever the lexicon of the superficial groupthink is these days. It doesn’t change the fact that Catherine was always the parent with the kinder heart, more wisdom and better coping skills.

Empty nest, full heart

With our kids off at school and Catherine visiting my mother-in-law, I’m left holding down Fort Jasper, which leaves me lots of time for skateboarding and reading. Right now, I’m reading “Fairy Tale,� one of those Stephen King doorstops, a relatively recent one from 2022. I’m on the final pages, and I’ll soon finish if I can stop playing word games on my phone.

The book tells the adventures of a young man named Charlie, who loses his mother when he’s 7. His father descends into alcoholism for several years before a former coworker brings him into the AA fold. Charlie’s a good kid, and resourceful, and befriends an injured elderly neighbor up the street they live on. As a result, a sort of magical adventure ensues.

Charlie turns out well, although he did go through a rough period of misbehavior that went beyond mischief with his mother gone and his dad checked out.

Reading it, I can’t help but wonder how things would’ve gone if our kids had grown up with only me around, there would have been no patient person to listen to them as they navigated the challenges of school. Forget the increasingly complex social morass — who would’ve helped them with algebra and, well, whatever math comes after that?

There would have been zero photo albums, but maybe some Instagram and Facebook posts.

I would’ve kept them fed: Crappy dinners, fast food wrappers from floor to ceiling, possible malnutrition.

Hair would’ve been a disaster. I could barely brush their hair, much less braid it. I remember trying to detangle our twins’ wavy heads of hair before elementary school, and it was enough to make you want to pull your hair out.

The sweet little notes often tucked in their lunch boxes? That would never have occurred to me. That was all Mom.

It’s no wonder, years later, the kids tend to call her when they want someone to talk to: Catherine is the listener, the unsung hero of our entire family. I get it. She’s Mom.

I am pretty vocal about my dislike of empty nesting, but a big part of that is wishing I’d done a better job, my reluctance to accept that I’m simply out of time there. I mean, I’m sure the girls got something useful from me. Smart-aleck senses of humor? Thick heads of hair? Creative swearing? An education in early punk rock and new wave?

But it’s Mother’s Day, and thanks to their mom, our girls are wise, beautiful, articulate, hilarious young women (with great hair).

I have no reason to doubt that they are, but because you can’t really know what’s inside your kids’ hearts: I hope and wish all three of our daughters are grateful for their mom.

I know I am.