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For the Love of Pete: Marriage, Meatballs, & Big
Macs ™
I love my husband, Pete, every day, and most days I like him too.
There’s nothing he won’t do to help me, except when he’s watching
sports and news shows or stepping into his alter ego as the captain of
his fantasy sports team, whatever season or league that might be.
Those activities account for far more hours in his day than what might
seem normal or reasonable to any wife. That may be the reason my
second favorite saying around the house is, “So help me Pete.” It’s
usually not in the form of a request for assistance but a
well-animated declaration of amused exasperation at the realization I
won’t be getting any assistance at all. As a result of all of these
taxing daily activities, this hard-working, good-natured creature
needs his sleep too. He usually fits in a snore-induced nap until he’s
called for dinner. I can see Pete and our little Havanese puppy,
Beemer, stretched out together on the couch from my vantage point in
the kitchen. Beemer sleeps upside down, a sign I am told that
indicates he is completely content and at ease. Actually, I use this
to my advantage. If Pete was lurking in the kitchen while I was
prepping a meal or cooking, or even making a sandwich, he would ask me
questions like, “Why are you putting that stuff in the tuna salad?” He
doesn’t know it’s Italian parsley or dill, which I add to the diced
celery and onion and fresh lemon juice as well as a couple of dollops
of mayonnaise when mixing up the tuna salad. I’ve been making the tuna
salad, the only fish that Pete will eat, using this recipe for more
than 10 years. It’s a recipe that I created through some
experimentation and it always gets me a, “Great tuna, Wolf,” from
Pete. “Wolf” is a term of endearment that Pete uses when he’s happy,
which is most of the time. It emanates from a high-energy radio job he
acquired before we met when he was known as the “Night Wolf.” I
actually listened to his show before I met him and thought he was
crazy. When I did finally meet him, (we were both volunteering to help
raise money for the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center) it was a
sweltering day in Baltimore and Pete showed up in shorts, his socks
pulled up straight, and a wallet stuffed in one of the socks. I’m sure
my expression spoke volumes. I remember thinking; “I guess I can cross
him off the potential husband material list because this guy
definitely is crazy!” A few weeks after our initial meeting we met up
again and he made me laugh, but not because his wallet was stuffed in
his socks. He’s actually a pretty funny guy and his humor has helped
to get us through some of the toughest moments in our lives. So I
invited Pete to a cookout with a few other friends and he turned me
down. He told me he had to head home for the weekend to suburban
Philadelphia to visit his family (a place I would later discover had
the coolest shopping mall in the country; even better than Mall of
America) so his mother could do his laundry. “Wow, I thought, strike
two, what a goofball.” Little did I know that this lovable goofball
would be my husband and inspire me to become a wonderful cook after
years as a spectacular failure at my culinary pursuits (a hard pill to
swallow coming from a long line of spectacular Italian cooks on my
Mother’s side – even my Dad was a wonderful cook!). I would also
discover that the reason his Mom did his wash was because after
working a full week he travelled from Baltimore to suburban
Philadelphia to volunteer as an ambulance driver in his hometown. This
“goofball” morphed into a “good egg” with a big heart and an even
bigger sense of humor. The expression “For the Love of Pete,” has had
many meanings over the years and has filled my eyes with laughter and
tears as we embarked on a journey that always brought us back to the
kitchen table with the people we love most. |
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