There’s something oddly impressive about my husband to me.  He can’t remember our first weekend together in the detail I’d like, in his youth he was more interested in ditching class to find chicks, booze and other illegal stuff than in paving the way toward college, but at times like just now, he makes me look at him in scholastic awe.

He laid sunning in his hammock in the back yard, immersed in the shadow of a book he held over his head.  I curled up atop two deeply cushioned patio chairs, shriveling away from the sun toasting my bare leg skin golden brown, reading a book recommended to me by a bloggy friend.  Downing a huge glass of my favorite white wine, Caymus Vineyards’ Conundrum, I attempted to keep my mind in the first chapter of The Rule of Four.  Written by a Princeton University graduate in collaboration with a Harvard University graduate, this book had a few more SAT words in it than my previous reads, the four volumes of Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight.

“What’s a mason?” I asked abruptly.

My husband touched his finger to his place in his book and looked up.  “Mason?  As in the secret society, or as in people who builds brick walls?”

“Oh,” I said, and read on.  And then later, “What’s an albatross?”

“An albatross is a large sea bird,” he said and went on to describe the long beak, its hunting patterns in the sea. 

I watched him patiently.  When he was done, I asked, “Is there a second definition?”

“Yeah,” he said without a beat.  “In Greek mythology an albatross is a large thing hung around a person’s neck, something heavy, that keeps him from being able to move easily, like a punishment…”  He gestured around his neck.

“Like a ball and chain?” I asked.

“Sort of.  Like a burden.  What’s the context?”

I read, ” ‘I have a peculiar middle name, which for parts of my childhood I carred like an albatross around my neck.’ ”

I love walking Wikipedias.