Wife freaks out, slaps me, leaves, returns, threatens ....

I started this post a week ago.  A week ago last Friday, in fact.  (That means Friday the fifth.)  The weekend hadn't even started, and already it was full of drama.  I'll try to keep it brief.  I'll also keep all the time references as they were when I started.
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This was the first day of Parent's Weekend at Hogwarts.  Last night we drove to my parents' house, five minutes away from the Hogwarts campus.  The idea was that Wife and I would sleep there, spend today at Hogwarts visiting Son 1's classes and talking to his advisor -- partly about Son 1's abysmal grades, and partly about what support he might need when he learns we are divorcing -- and then drive home, skipping the second day; then tomorrow we'll go visit Durmstrang, which is having their Parents' Weekend the very same weekend as Hogwarts (only Saturday-Sunday instead of Friday-Saturday).

It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, so I wanted to leave as soon as I got home from work.  Wife had been fighting with plumbers all day, so she was already primed for battle and running late.  I tried to be patient, or at least tried to act patiently, until we were already an hour past the time we'd planned to leave; and then I confess my half-hearted imitation of a patient person fell apart pretty sadly.  I picked things up to dump them in the car, asked Wife fretfully if she had anything more she had to take, and made myself a general pain in the ass.  So Wife got rattled and disorganized and ended up leaving her glasses behind.  But finally we got under way.

Wife can't stand to sit silently, so she talked most of the drive.  She complained about the plumbers, she complained about the house, she complained about me, she complained about the divorce ... in fact, she complained about pretty much anything she could think of.  At a couple of points I thought her remarks were interesting, though not perhaps in quite the way she intended.

For example, at one point we were talking about a subject I had already discussed with her at considerable extent in e-mail.  Not wanting to repeat myself, I asked ...

Hosea: Hmmm. Well, I don't know how many of my e-mails you have read, but ....

Wife: I haven't read any of your e-mails! You should know that. I don't have your password and in any event I would respect your privacy. How dare you insinuate that I have been reading your e-mails?!

Hosea: No, actually I meant the e-mails I have written to you. It never occurred to me about that other. Gosh, interesting you should jump to that conclusion .... Does this tell me where your head is at?

Or at another point, she started complaining about my proposed terms for the divorce, and suddenly said, ...

Wife: You know, I really resent the way you are trying to use visitation with the children as a way to extort my agreement to a plan that is clearly not in my best interests.

Hosea: Huh? I'm not doing that at all. What are you talking about? I've proposed a plan that I think is fair. You don't like it -- OK, that's fine, you should propose another one. But I'm not trying to extort anything, and I'm certainly not using time with the children as any kind of lever. Why would you even think of such a thing? Is this what you are planning to do to me?

It wasn't a fun drive.

We got to my parents' house.  They weren't too thrilled to see her -- at any rate, my mother made herself scarce in the kitchen and my father made the kind of dull, toneless chit-chat that he makes when he knows he has to but wishes he were somewhere else -- but of course they asked us in and offered us a slice of pie for dessert.  (My mother makes the best pie on the face of the planet, and I'm not interested in hearing how good you think your pie -- or your mother's pie -- is by comparison.)  But Wife was disagreeing with everything anybody said.  My father complimented her on something she was wearing, saying it was a very pretty shawl, and she snapped "It's not a shawl."  Then it was something else.  And something else.  Finally she got so mad at something she thought my dad had said -- though he hadn't, and in fact we were talking about something totally different anyway -- that she got up from the table abruptly and left.

I followed her into the other room to tell her that she was objecting to a nothing: nobody was talking about what she thought we were talking about, nobody had said what she thought had been said, and in any event none of it was worth getting mad at.  I told her that her overreaction was so extreme as to be laughable.

Wife: If you were standing over here where I could reach you and said that, I'd slap your face!

Hosea: No problem, I can move.

I walked over to within arm's reach, meanwhile also calling my parents into the room as witnesses in case she did something really bad.  She spewed venom at me for a while -- sorry, I'd give a transcript if I could remember it but I can't.  But it was so disconnected from any sense, and so far over the top, that it was very easy to laugh.  So I did.  And so she slapped me.

Not very hard, really.  And I have to admit I laughed at that too.

Wife gathered up her tote bag and bolted outside.  As she climbed into the car, I followed and asked her where she was going.  "Anywhere I want!!"  And she was off.

The rest of the evening was a lot quieter, but none of us knew what to expect.  Was she going to a motel?  (Could be.)  Was she going to try to drive the two-and-a-half hours home, late at night in the dark?  (I thought this unlikely.)  Was she going to drive off a bridge, or into a tree?  (Not real likely, but I couldn't rule it out.)  Or was she just going to drive for the state line and then keep going as far as she could go?  Nobody knew.  My mother went to bed.  My father and I talked about it for a couple hours.  ("Has she ever done this kind of thing before? Just fled like this?" "I don't remember, but she sure has talked about it." "Has she ever threatened suicide before?" "She's talked about it but never done anything.")  And finally we too turned in.  I made sure to sleep lightly and in my clothes, so that I could wake up and be ready if she came back in the middle of the night to do anything unpredictable.

But she didn't.

The next morning she called while I was eating breakfast.  The first words out of her mouth after I said "Hello" were to complain about the motel where she had spent the night, because they didn't give her a wake-up call.  So when was I planning to leave for Hogwarts?

I don't know, maybe half an hour.

Wait for me.

I'll wait the half an hour or a couple minutes longer, but not forever.

Just wait for me -- I'll be right there.  Click.

In fact she got there in just about half an hour -- pulled up in front of the house and waited for me to climb in.  Then without a word she pulled away to drive to Hogwarts.

A couple of minutes down the road, she said suddenly, "Don't you ever do that again! If you ever just stand there and laugh at me again. I'll beat you to a pulp. Go ahead and call the police -- you'll be filing your complaint through a straw."

I don't remember what I said back, but it was pretty inconsequential.  Later in the day, as we were walking around Hogwarts attending Son 1's classes, she said to me, "Of course I would never really do anything to hurt you, but please never laugh at me again because it is the worst thing in the world to me."  Mind you, I never really thought she was going to beat me to a pulp.  The fact that I weigh approximately twice what she does, that she has done nothing for years to strengthen her muscles, and that she still doesn't have her gun ... all these things make me feel reasonably secure.  But I also understand that she has real trouble coping with being laughed at.

At the end of the day we met with Son 1's advisor.  We discussed some plans to bring up his grades, and also discussed what kind of support he might need after learning about the divorce.  And then we left.  Later my dad said that he asked Son 1 how Parents' Day went, and Son 1 simply said "Disastrous."

As Wife and I drove home, we talked about laughter just a bit.  (She brought the subject up.)  I tried to suggest that being laughed at is no big deal.  She didn't get that at all: how could it not be a big deal for someone else to mock at you, to think you are so petty and worthless as to be laughable?

But I am laughable, I told her.  Good Lord, you can't think I take myself seriously.  Nor should you, nor should any of us.  If someone mocks me -- hell, let him.  I mock at myself, why shouldn't he?  There's no human alive who isn't silly enough to deserve a good belly-laugh, if you only look at us right.  Let it go, relax over it, and have a good laugh.  Taking yourself seriously is a lot of work, after all ... who has time or energy for it?  Why bother?

She didn't see it that way.  No surprise, I guess.